


Breaking the Chain

by Kahvi, Roadstergal



Series: Spanners/Breaking the Chain Series [2]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Dysfunctional Relationships, Established Relationship, Humor, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 14:49:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 45,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rimmer is back on Starbug, and shagging Lister, but all is far from well. Between a pathologically jealous flight computer, a mechanoid with a fear of abandonment, an annoyingly capable and attractive Kochanski and the fact that no one except Lister actually knows his true identity yet, Rimmer has quite enough on his plate. And, of course, he still has to go out and be Ace Rimmer - multidimensional hero - at regular intervals. You can't break the chain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was touted as the most significant advance in computing since the abacus. Clonally Reproduced Authentic Personalities; these computers were built to mimic the neural networks of their creators, to use the strange connections of the human brain, which humans themselves still did not understand, to think more flexibly. CRAP computers could learn from experience, could think creatively, and could even mimic human emotions. Many CRAP computers were used as the heart of machines that benefited from independent action; CRAP computers were assigned to oversee machines in environments that were too hostile for humans to venture. Manufacturing robots on Mercury, mining robots on Io, and bouncers in Australian bars were all controlled by this new wave of computers. They found domestic use, as well, most notably in the 4000 and 5000 series of mechanoids from Divadroid.

It was a wave that did not last long. Whoever OKed this project was not someone who realized that computer programmers, as a group, do not tend to be the most well-adjusted of individuals. CRAP computers were moody and neurotic, and tended to sulk. Most of them were recalled in favor of new algorithms, which, although lacking in the flexibility of their predecessors, were significantly more reliable, and did not require users to have a staff psychologist on standby.

You might still, if you peek in at the latter half of the 23rd century, find a few of them still in use. The Space Corps test base on Mimas had a handful. The programmer who had been the basis for their flight control computers - yes, her head was altogether too easily turned by a handsome face, or an indifferent face, or even a somewhat ugly face. She had been more than a little boy-crazy. But she had also been brilliant at astronavigation, and as most of the test pilots tended to be single men, the personality quirks of that series had been seen as a plus.

Nobody could have predicted what would happen when an already giddy computer was assigned to that fine specimen of manhood, Commander Ace Rimmer. There was no denying that he was, indeed, a hell of a guy, however, so it bothered nobody when she developed a rather significant crush on him. Didn't everyone?

 

The Computer had no other name. She was merely The Computer, or, as she liked to think of herself, "Computer," in Ace's velvety tones. She had been reassured by the staff psychologists that she did not have emotions, merely simulations of them, but this was a metaphysical point far too subtle for her programming. She only knew that it sent a thrill of current through her higher-order-function processors when he stepped into the cockpit, and when he grasped her flight stick with those strong, lean hands, she sometimes had to do a soft boot to focus on her job. She was completely satisfied with her job. Her job was to keep Ace flying and to keep him safe, and what more could a besotted Computer ask for?

He had girlfriends by the score. What did that matter? They ran through his life like water. _She_ was the constant presence in his life. She was there when he walked out of the base and started his missions in the mornings, and she flew him home safely at night. She was installed into the DJ ship for its virgin run, under Ace's expert hands. Did they trust any other computer? No, _her_ , only her. She was installed by Spanners - the only other constant in Ace's life, and she resented it. But he would be out of their lives after this trip. She and Ace would be together, forever, one way or another; death in a blaze of glory, or life together, facing a multiverse of hostile dimensions. She almost blew a relay in excitement.

They arrived safely in another dimension, and the latter possibility is what came to pass. It was everything she could have hoped for - perhaps a little more. She tended to Ace, carrying him safely from adventure to adventure, protecting him as best she could as he righted wrongs and rescued beautiful damsels. And had sex with them, of course, but what did she care? They, too, flowed through his life without leaving a mark. She was the constant.

She was there the day he died.

He had been fighting in a war of liberation; the gentle and artistic Slevegardians asked for his help in their rebellion against the evil and flatulent Grodganders. Being Ace, he had accepted, of course, and had struggled shoulder-to-shoulder with them (the Slevegardians had a four-meter shoulder span, so this was no small matter) for three years. Computer had supported him, using her advanced electronics to monitor the enemy, who were prone to sneak attacks and diversionary tactics. Finally, the forces of good, beauty, and proper grammar had an opportunity to triumph, and all that was required was the theft of an important document from the Grodgandish headquarters. She had no idea what the purpose of the document was; all she knew was that he recovered it, delivered it to the Slevegardian leadership, and staggered back to the DJ ship, bleeding from any number of wounds, including a series of fractured ribs that protruded from his skin on one end and punctured a lung on the other. On seeing the state of him, she launched the ship, the retros taking out the suburbs of a small Slevegardian city. She did not care. Ace was dying, and she was prepared to launch both of them into the heart of a white-hot sun; a fitting end for a hero, and perhaps his loyal, loving computer, as well. She assured him all would be well. He, in turn, assured her that she would carry on after him, carry on his legacy. Pouring on yet more assurance, she soothingly assured him that she would, indeed, while a background process tweaked their trajectory for optimal impact. They would create a flare that would burn for centuries.

"Well," Ace gasped, one hand pressed to his bleeding side, "after all, there are all kinds of alternate dimensions, aren't there? Bound to be another Ace Rimmer. Better than me, I'll bet. You should find him, old girl. You have action in your circuits; no quiet retirement for you, eh?" He gasped again, coughed up a mouthful of blood, and slouched in his flight chair, his life signs faltering.

His words started a thought process in the computer that practically blew her motherboard. Other Aces. Other Aces. Other Aces! This was just a shell. The spirit of Ace lived on, in other dimensions! She would find them. She would bring each one, in turn, to his destiny as a hero. She would love every single last one of them! Yes. She fired her guidance rockets to swing them around the sun, and started the calculations necessary for a jump to another dimension. One that was close to their original dimension. She wondered, idly, how to dispose of the shell. Bloodstains were hell to get off of synthoplast.

 

Five million years had changed the Computer very little. She had received a number of upgrades, which had decreased her size to a tenth of the original, while incorporating memory upgrades that allowed her to store every detail of her millions of years of existence for immediate recall. Her processing power gave her an almost-prescient ability to extrapolate from known data.

But she was still in love with Ace. Every single one.

And she was still slightly jealous of Spanners. Every single one that she came across.

This odd, grotty, messy, Spanners-look-alike had relieved her, when she first saw him greet yet another dying Ace in Starbug's landing dock. He did not look a shadow of the crisp, alert, competent man she remembered. So why had this Ace returned to speak with him, after speaking with a near-duplicate of the Spanners she had eyed with suspicion, so long ago? And why did they both return? This Ace was more taciturn and introspective than (she ran a quick memory check) any previous Ace, and that bothered her. Heroes were not introspective. They were brave and charming and wonderful and superficial. She had spent rather a lot of time worrying about whether this one was a true Ace, and this strange development made her wish for teeth, so that she could chew on a pencil while pondering. It seemed to help humans so, and she had not encountered a quandary this challenging in (she ran a quick memory check) four million, six hundred thousand, and twenty-four years. Plus a few hours. She did not understand what the connection was between this Ace and this strange Spanners alternate. But when they exited (to her great relief) the dimension that housed the too-like-the-original Spanners, after only a few hours, and Ace unstrapped himself from the pilot's seat after takeoff and joined... Lister on the cot in the back, she began to have an all-too-good idea of what it might be.

 

Rimmer sat on the cot in the back of the DJ ship, next to Lister. His mind was not settled. Spanners had not returned by the time Lister had awoken, but Rimmer had felt an urgent need to depart. He muttered some gobbledygook about dimensional inertia and particular fluctuation and entropy enhancement, but the truth was, he could not lie there with Lister atop him, looking down at him in adoration, and face... things. What they had done. What they might do. Dressed, wigged, Aced, and strapped into his pilot's seat, a short time later, he had reviewed the conversation and cringed. Words that had made perfect sense when gasped in the heat of a sexual moment became overblown and trite when viewed in the clear, cold light of a launch pad. He could deal with that, though, he was sure, if it weren't for the fact that he was smegging horny. They had just had sex an hour ago, and he was already as hard as his Aunt Agatha's fruitcake. There were now two joysticks in the cabin. What was wrong with him? He needed to invest in saltpeter, anesthetic, fecking sledgehammers, if nothing else did the trick - but with none of these on hand, he found himself seated in the back of the cabin on the cot, next to Lister, trying to find a way of saying, "Would you like to get naked and shag?" that did not sound like, "Would you like to get naked and shag?"

He licked his lips.

Lister had been trying to make conversation with Rimmer ever since they left, all too soon in his not-so-humble-opinion, that admittedly borrowed bed in Spanners's quarters. No, that was inaccurate. He'd been trying to get more than single-syllable words out of him. Body language, sign language; anything. It really was beyond frustrating. All right, so he'd had no illusions that any battles had been won. He was well aware that loving Arnold Judas Rimmer was a full-time job even without the added complications of him being Ace, and Lister had told himself he was more than willing to take it on. Sometimes, however, he just wished the smegheaded idiot would just get his goited head around the idea that Lister loved him! That was his goal for now. One thing at a time. He looked at the man seated next to him, all nervous uncertainty and virtually non-existent self-esteem wrapped in a hard-candy shell of neuroses. And this, he told himself, he loved? Smegging hell. What had he gotten himself into?

"Erm..." That was not a promising start, Rimmer thought. It lacked - well, comprehensible words. "Look, I..." he trailed off, his hands twitching. He had no decent sentences beginning with "I" on hand.

Perhaps, Lister thought, looking up abruptly at the voice, it would all be so much easier if the mere sight of Rimmer didn't make him insanely horny. He realized that his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He was rather jittery. He didn't like to think about why; that would just make it worse.

Rimmer shifted on the cot. Maybe Lister would get the hint. Or maybe he would think that Rimmer's underwear was excessively itchy.

This was useless. He had no idea why, but Lister found himself unusually nervous at the thought of coming on to Rimmer. They'd just had sex, for smeg's sake, and here he was, unable to just reach out and grab the man? What _was_ this? He tried to arrange his body-language to explain his position, but found that it was suffering from a speech impediment. And not just the one making his pants uncomfortably tight. Fine, so love made you blind; accepted. But love making you mute? Making your _body_ mute?

Rimmer awkwardly raised his hand and touched Lister on the shoulder, but pulled his hand back nervously. He was not a... touch-person. He did not do casual touching well. He clasped his hands on his lap.

Lister looked at the hand when it touched his shoulder. The hand was good. That had to be Rimmer's idea of a come-on - although you could never know. The man was a neverending mental puzzle. Slowly, Lister moved his eyes upwards, reaching Rimmer's face, and edged a little closer. He licked his lips nervously. "You... Er..."

To er is human, to get to the point divine, Rimmer thought, pulling off his wig and fiddling with it. His hands needed to be doing _something_.

Wig is coming off, Lister thought; that's a good sign, too. Fecking hell, he was ready to jump him; and after what they'd just done? Lister looked at the wig, at the hands playing with the wig. Thought of what those hands could do. He looked up.

"Well." A complete word, and seen from some angles, a complete sentence. Well done, Arn. "Do you..." He stuttered to a halt as he saw that Lister was staring at him. And he had been doing so well. He found he could not look away.

Oh, to hell with it, Lister thought, lunging forward into a kiss. He was shivering all over, urged on by some force which had been, he realized, locked up inside him for far too long, and now demanded its fair share of time in the spotlight.

Rimmer accepted it eagerly, resignation and relief slowly giving way to even more acute horniness. He closed his eyes, but from that angle, he might not have noticed the little lights that blipped on the Computer's console even if they had been open. The Computer was... considering.

Oh, good - he liked it! Stupid thought, perhaps, but how should Lister know? Rimmer had said sod-all for the last hour beyond mumbled techno-jargon and subdued Ace-lines to passers-by, so how could Lister possibly... Oh, who cared! With something of a deep, satisfying inner thrill, he deepened the kiss, pulling Rimmer closer by the back of his neck.

The word 'horizontal' came to Rimmer's mind, for no good reason, and he pulled Lister in at the small of his back, while pushing him back onto the cot by leaning in. He found that he was muttering incomprehensible things, interspersed with a fair amount of moaning and the other odd noises people tend to make in the throes of sexual excitement. He found himself doing a dance he had not done since college, one he was sure was out of style by now, known as The Frottage.

Half-moaned, half-whimpering, entirely lost, Lister tried to wrap his legs around Rimmer, rather enjoying the sounds he was evoking. He tried to see how far he could get his tongue into Rimmer's mouth, a faint voice in his mind warning him to take it slow and easy. People sometimes had interesting reactions to his tongue.

Rimmer wondered, idly, just how long that tongue was. He tried to see how wide open he could get his mouth, to have some idea of its range.

More than impatient now, Lister pulled and prodded at the clasps on Rimmer's flightsuit, trying to remember how those smegging clasps worked. His brain was otherwise engaged, however, and he fumbled at them ineffectively.

For smeg's sake. The little winzed tailor had designed them to be easy-open claps. Even Lister should have figured them out by now! He slowed down his mouth-licking and put his hand over Lister's, demonstrating how they simply popped open, if tugged the right way. Lister broke the kiss and looked on, mouth open. Rimmer's annoyance slipped as a smug superiority nosed its way in. Ah, Lister didn't know _everything_ about sex, did he? Rimmer flashed a snarky grin. But by then, Lister had already taken Rimmer's hand in his, leading it slowly to his mouth, and had started slowly sucking at his fingers, very, very gently. Rimmer's grin faded. Maybe he was wrong about that after all. The feel of Lister's mouth on his fingers was making little whimpery sounds fall out of his own mouth. He reached his unoccupied hand down to tug at Lister's belt.

Lister found that he was getting a little too into what he was doing, and began to worry. He tended to lose himself in sex, unable to recall much about it other than a vague perception of how it had been, but this was different. In a very, very good, but frightening, way. He tried to help with the belt. Licking Rimmer's fingers got in the way, and he had to stop, tearing off the belt in annoyance.

Rimmer was not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that Lister had stopped. Instead of contemplating that line of thought, he pushed at Lister's jacket and jumpsuit, trying to get it all off. It was a mess of patches and laces, and Rimmer was still not sure what fastened and what served a structural function.

The last thing on Lister's mind was whether or not his clothes survived this intact. He tried to shrug out of them, rising a little off of the bed, but this mainly resulted in him thrashing aimlessly about.

While it was somewhat exciting to watch Lister thrash about, Rimmer could not help but think that the effect was somewhat blunted by Lister being fully clothed. He stood, pulling at Lister's clothes from a position of leverage next to the cot. Lister hurriedly tried to help. He managed to remove his jacket with some difficulty, and small surge of triumph passed through him at this.

Leaving the more esoteric of Lister's clothes to Lister, Rimmer settled for pulling at his boots. Lister slithered towards him. Rimmer stopped, and started picking at the knots in the laces with annoyance. Lister let Rimmer deal with the boots. He tried to remove the overalls from his upper body, using teeth, arms, elbows, anything, which only resulted in him getting tangled up in himself.

Rimmer finally pulled Lister's boots off and tossed the dratted interfering things off to the side. He made a mental note to throw them away. Maybe Lister would get boots with zippers. Or just go barefoot.

With Rimmer no longer yanking at his feet, Lister managed to work his way free of the upper half of his jumpsuit. Rimmer grabbed the cuffs at Lister's ankles, pulling and shaking, trying to work the jumpsuit off. _His_ jumpsuit had gone on and off much more easily than this, he thought with irritation. Some part of him reminded him that it was never worked off by another person in a sexual frenzy; he ignored it. He tossed the jumpsuit away, grabbed the long johns, which had been pulled halfway off with the jumpsuit, yanked them off completely, and tossed them away, as well. Good. Lister was naked. He looked down at himself. He was not.

Finally! Lister observed his naked body with some relief. He sat back, panting, looking at Rimmer. Maybe he would strip? A faint, unlikely hope, but a man could dream, couldn't he?

Rimmer pulled off his jacket, tossing it over the back of the flight chair. He did a little dance to try to get out of his boots, which seemed to evoke an odd sort of giggle from Lister. Yet again, he cursed his decision to wear real clothes. The women could have just dealt with the holo-clothes, couldn't they have? His attempt to toe out of his boots was hampered by Lister reaching out and grabbing his shirt, pulling it over his head. He bowed to help it slide off.

At this point, Lister found himself in the advantageous position of being on the inside of Rimmer's half-off shirt and quite close to Rimmer's neck. What could he do but lick it?

Rimmer yelped. No, he did not need more stimulation, he fumed; he had quite enough at the moment, and needed this bacofoil out of the way, thank you. He feverishly tore at his pants, getting them and the boots off, finally.

Lister worked Rimmer's shirt off as best he could, while licking skin as it became available. It tasted better than any food; high praise, coming from him. But it was true; being with Rimmer seemed to escalate his senses, enhance them. The sheer sensory input was almost too much. He idly wondered what would happen if he combined the two; imagining Rimmer drenched in Madras sauce. The thought alone almost made him come.

Rimmer pulled back to get the shirt all of the way off, staggering back into the pilot's chair, stepping on one of his boots and Lister's jumpsuit. Lister tossed the shirt away as it came off; he turned to Rimmer with a jubilant grin, pulling him close.

Rimmer practically jumped on top of Lister, pushing him back down onto the cot. Naked. Check. On cot. Check. Sex. In process. He licked anything near his mouth, bumping his nose against Lister's face. Lister laughed, happily, planting kisses wherever possible, concentrating on Rimmer's face.

The Computer sat, patiently, watching and listening. The noises were not unlike the ones Ace - and every Ace before - had made after bringing a nubile young thing aboard. The undulations, too, were fairly standard. She knew that sex was the one thing she could not provide for Ace, after all; as long as he took his pleasure with nubile young things and dropped them afterwards, she accepted the situation. The fact that this was _not_ some nubile young thing, however, nagged at her higher processing functions, and forced her to take a closer analytical view at the situation.

She therefore ran an analysis on the noises she heard. Yes, the moans and sighs were standard, as she ran a comparison of them against the ones recorded in her database. However, the act currently ongoing involved 34% more giggling and an astounding 78% more laughing than any previous. The breathy, moany whine of Ace's climax, too, was 26% longer in duration than any a previous Ace had experienced in the cockpit.

So to speak.

The Computer started to experience something that the staff psychologists have assured her were only facsimiles of worry and dread. They took over an additional 46% of her run-time when she observed the followup to the act. She had been waiting for Ace to dress and sit in the flight seat, as usual. Instead, he and Lister engaged in an activity that could be best described as... reclining. Cuddling. Snuggling. Resting. The definitions were rather esoteric, and she could not distinguish the difference. Some form of not-getting-up-and-getting-dressed.

She put herself on an internal blue alert. But she knew the importance of data-gathering. She waited, watched, and listened.

Rimmer looked at the ceiling, a somewhat distant expression on his face, stroking Lister's arm. The acute need now passed, he did one of the things that he was rather good at. He worried.

Lister lay close to Rimmer, his eyes closed, a grin permanently etched into face. Would it be this amazing every time? He listened to Rimmer's non-existent heartbeat, the low electric hum he produced. It was not as eerie as he would have thought.

"So now..." Rimmer sucked in his lips, thinking, running over scenarios in his mind. He liked none of them.

Lister sighed contentedly. He wouldn't have minded lying there for the better part of the rest of his natural life.

Rimmer spit out his lips. "...back to Starbug."

Lister sighed again. "Yeah. I suppose."

Rimmer raised himself onto his elbow, facing Lister. Lister felt him shift and opened his eyes, looking on curiously. "So what is _Ace_ doing?" Rimmer asked. He dropped back into the Ace voice. "Hullo, fellahs, I'll just be dropping back in every few weeks? Diddling Davey-boy, you know."

The voice was perfect now; not the confused rise and fall in pitch Lister remembered from before he left. He shifted to face Rimmer, shaking his head and grinning.

"Or..." Rimmer hopped into his own voice as he dropped onto his back, looking at the ceiling. "April fool!"

As he noticed the latent worry in Rimmer's voice, Lister grew serious. It was hard to know what to say; he could never tell what Rimmer would react wrongly to. And this... this thing they had here... Well, it was too precious to risk losing. He took his time.

Nothing. Thanks for the input, Rimmer thought. He looked over at Lister and raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not leaving you. I did say." That, at least, could not be misinterpreted.

"Yes," Rimmer growled. "That's all very sweet, but what do I do." He found that his voice would not raise this into the lilt of a question.

Lister looked down at the cot, picking at it with a free hand. He did not want to meet Rimmer's eyes, afraid of what the other man might think he saw in them. "That's for you to decide," he said, very hesitantly. Of course, Lister knew what he wanted. He wanted Rimmer to himself, back safely on Starbug, with their adopted family. He wanted to share a bed, not just quarters, with him; bicker amicably through the day, eat meals together, dodge whatever dangers might come, and spend the nights slowly making love. That's what he wanted. But it might not be what Rimmer needed.

"Me." Rimmer turned so he was lying on his side again, facing Lister. His decision? Lister had no involvement or stake in this? "What if I told you to leave the Bug?"

Lister looked up, his head somewhat tilted. "Well..." This needed careful phrasing. He gave it the time it needed. "I'm not sure. I'd have to think about it." He tried to look sincere. "But I'd want to be with you. Been without you for too long."

Him and Lister. In this little ship, a space even smaller than their old technicians' quarters. No privacy. They'd go spare. "Or told you to sneak me in once in... whenever." That, certainly, was pointlessly adolescent.

There was something very defiant and alluring about that idea. Lister grinned, imagining those potential nights. "I can't say that doesn't appeal to me!"

Yes. Right. Tagging along behind Starbug like a sad puppy. Rimmer turned to lie on his back again, feeling jumpy. Those two were out. That left only one possibility. "You want me to give up being Ace."

"Eh?" Lister asked, somewhat concerned. Well, it was the truth, wasn't it? But he couldn't tell Rimmer that; he'd automatically assume Lister would resent him for doing anything else. How could Lister make him _understand_?

"I don't know," Rimmer muttered. Being Ace was a death sentence, that much was certain. He had come close uncountable times already; it was only a matter of time, and not much time, at that. On the other hand, there were perks. The DJ ship. The freedom. The glamour. The swooning women. Give that up to go back to the stinking, greasy Habitrail that was Starbug? He felt claustrophobic just thinking about it.

Oh no, he was slipping; Lister could feel it. Did he have to say it straight out? Would that work? He leaned over to look into Rimmer's eyes. Rimmer looked back, blankly. "I just want you to be happy. That's all I ever wanted."

Lay off the hyperbole, Rimmer thought. All you've _ever_ wanted? We've done nothing but fight in most of the time we knew each other, and went to rather a lot of trouble to make each other miserable, back when I was alive. I know when that changed for me. When did it change for you? Last week? Rimmer raised his eyebrows, staring at Lister. Not seeing any kind of answer written on Lister's face, he closed his eyes, feeling very tired. "We have to tell them... something."

Maybe something had gotten through. Maybe not. Oh well, it was enough. Lister kissed Rimmer's forehead. "We should, yeah."

"What?" Ace never stayed longer than was necessary. Would that be all?

Lister gave a quick smile. "Whatever makes you comfortable. You don't even have to come back with me if you don't want." Please say no, he pleaded, desperately. If Rimmer left now, he realized, suddenly, he didn't think he could handle it.

"What, buzz the Bug and toss you at it?" Rimmer opened his eyes and flopped his head over. All he got in return was a blank, neutral stare. He still didn't get it, did he, Rimmer thought with exasperation. The quandary inherent in all of this. He licked his lips, and punctuated his question a little excessively. "Should I tell them I'm Rimmer?"

"You could." In fact, Lister wasn't sure they didn't already know, but he wasn't about to mention this now. But how could he possibly answer such a question? What did Rimmer want him to do; reassure him that everything would be all right? He couldn't do that. There were no guarantees in life, you just did your best and tried to stay positive. "You want me to tell you how they'd react to that?"

Rimmer's brow furrowed. "I'd have to kill the Cat." The infatuated feline would change his tune as soon as Ace was gone and goalpost head was back.

"Hah! He'd stove away on top of one of the lockers for days, man. Just sulking."

"Go back to that..." Rimmer muttered to himself, thinking about ill-lit corridors, mean sniping, urine re-cyc.

For a moment, looking into those multi-colored eyes, Lister saw what being Rimmer in that situation must have been like. Who could blame him, after all, for not wanting to go back to that? But it wouldn't be like that now. That had to be obvious. "It wouldn't be the same, you know. _You're_ not the same."

Probably true. But tangential. "As far as they're concerned..."

"At first, maybe. But they're not daft, any of 'em. All right, so Cat will never warm to ya, that we both know. But Kris..." Lister stopped abruptly at the mention of her name. He tried to reel himself in. "Erm, well, Kris you'd get along with fine. Big on reading, thinking, that kind of stuff..."

Rimmer frowned. Kris, Kris, bloody Kochanski. She'll be understanding, because she's just so smegging intelligent and intuitive. A thought occurred to him, a rather mean-spirited thought. "I could take her back." Yes, deal with that. Do you really want me and not her, Listy?

"Wha?"

"To her own dimension. If she wants, of course."

Lister's face, despite his best efforts, fell. "Oh. Right. Of course." He'd forgotten. How could he have forgotten? He felt a hint of unease as he tried to cover his surprise, no longer certain which one of them he was trying to convince. "She'll jump at the chance, she will. You should hear her; it's nothing but 'her Dave' this and 'her Dave' that." But she didn't harp on about that anymore, did she? She hadn't mentioned 'her' Dave for more than a year...

Her Dave. His Dave. Too many Daves, and too few. Rimmer found himself losing his grasp of words. "Yes, we'll see. Maybe I can... do that. While I... think things. Over. It'd give me," he paused, "a reason to come back, after."

This was too hard. Neither of them knew what the other person was thinking, and right at that moment, Lister would really like to have known what was on Rimmer's mind. It was hard to reassure someone when you didn't know what that someone needed reassuring about. "You need one?" he asked, hesitantly.

Lister looked like he was trying to bend spoons with his mind. What, can't read my thoughts, Listy? Then we're even. "If I'm going to stay Ace," Rimmer swallowed, "I should probably have one."

Lister smiled weakly. "Well, you're Ace; you know these things best." Rimmer snorted. Lister looked at him teasingly. Yes, he was Ace, but he wasn't like any Ace ever before. Like he'd said himself, he wasn't quite Ace. But he wasn't quite Arnold Judas Rimmer, smeghead extraordinaire, anymore, either. Being Ace had done something to him. He looked stronger, he felt calmer; he was clearly more confident. Something shone within him. Because it really did invite touch, Lister began stroking Rimmer's arm tenderly. "Ace..." he repeated, with a flirtatious smile. Arn. Ace. And for the moment, should he manage to hold on to him, he was his. _His_! He gave a huge, contented sigh, deciding, for the moment, to let communication problems be communication problems.

The flirtatious smile was... hypnotic. Rimmer moved like he was being pulled by strings to kiss Lister on the lips.

This had gone far enough. The Computer had all of the data she needed, for now - and far more than she wanted. She activated her voice circuits, increasing the standard sultry level by 20%. Her voice dripped out of the speakers like airborne honey. "Ace?"

Rimmer and Lister both leapt a little at the sound. "Wha? Who?" Lister asked, half-expecting roaring klaxons and bug-eyed monsters breaking down the airlock door.

"Yes, Com..." Rimmer's voice cracked. He cleared his throat, putting on Ace. "Yes, Computer?"

Oh. Ship's computer. Lister felt exceedingly silly, and tried to pretend like he hadn't just squealed like a teenage girl.

"We're about to arrive at Starbug," the Computer purred. "I thought you might want to be..." her visual feed took in his nudity, "presentable."

There was just something inherently funny about the naked male body, even when it took the magnificent shape of Arnold Rimmer, and Lister couldn't help but giggle. Rimmer's mouth twisted as he looked back at Lister. Shit, Lister thought, he was naked, too! And his clothes would be torn, and were scattered all over the place. He looked at himself, eyes wide, panic rising.

Rimmer gave Lister a hearty slap on the shoulder. "You look better than ever, Davey-boy," he declared.

The combination of Ace's tones, words and gestures with a touch which he knew was Rimmer's, and the memory and smell of what they'd just done, mixed in Lister's mind, trying to make sense of one another. "Yeah, thanks!" he muttered, sarcastically. That helped somewhat.

Rimmer got off of the cot and started trying to pull his clothes together. He tossed Lister's back onto the cot as he came across them.

Once he actually found them, Lister tried to put his clothes on as well he could. He got some garments mixed up - no, he reminded himself, socks do not go _there_ \- but managed to dress as well as he usually did.

Rimmer was used to getting dressed in this cramped space, but not in the company of a flailing Lister. They kept bumping, and Rimmer's re-dressing was punctuated by mutterings of "sorry... ugh... sorry..."

Something bubbled up in Lister as he watched Rimmer bent to fasten his boots. There was that irresistible, perfectly shaped arse, sticking way up into the air, taunting him, tempting him. And Lister, joyously, gave in, slapping it heartily. Rimmer yelped and bit Lister's neck, which made Lister yelp in return, and laugh; laugh long and happily; laugh like he hadn't done for far, far too long. The Computer recorded all of these events, linking them to the feeling of alarm that she had shunted off as a sub-process in order to prevent it interfering with her regular functions. While Ace was still doing up his fly, she announced, sexily, "Opening communications channels..."

Rimmer finished dressing in a flurry of activity, slapping the wig on his head.

Still rather euphoric, Lister checked himself, finding said self quite lovely, thank you very much. He felt smug.

Rimmer sat in the pilot's chair. He was too flustered to find anything lovely. "Hey, fellahs! Got a passenger to bring back - how about a spot to land?"

It was entirely pointless, as no one would be able to see him, but Lister nevertheless sat on the cot with his back straight, as though he were the best student in Sunday school. He tried not to move, not to breathe in the smell of what had just happened on that now-no-longer-neatly-made cot. It was just a shame that the act of trying not to think about it made you think about it. Intently.

Kryten's voice came through the comm. "You're bringing Mister Lister back?" He sounded almost relieved.

Lister shouted, "Hiya, Krytes!" while trying to see over Rimmer's shoulder.

"Ah, wonderful! Yes, just proceed to the erm... er... eh..." Tapping noises came through the connection. "Oh, yes, the only landing bay Starbug has."

"Righto, Kryters!" Rimmer replied, heartily. His head was full of Lister, Kochanski, Ace, and that smegging sultry Computer. He hoped there was room in there to shoehorn the landing he was about to make.

Lister tried to give Rimmer a meaningful glance, but was seated behind him, so he could not. There was something very wrong with that computer.

Rimmer grabbed the joystick. The Computer purred, "Transferring to manual." There was no reason for her voice to be dripping sex like that, Rimmer thought desperately, feeling himself aroused by... his bloody Computer?

Stick, Lister thought. Hands. Hands on stick. Stick. He tried to shake it off, but being as it was in his line of sight, that was pretty much impossible unless he closed his eyes, which was a lot harder than it should have been.

The Computer knew what effect her voice was having. She knew Ace, and had tweaked the timbre of her voice over the last three million years for optimal effect on his auditory system. She noted the dilation of his pupils (did he know how fortunate he was? many hard-light drives were only able to project pale copies of actual humanity) and felt rather pleased. "Time to show them your... stick work..." she added, emphasizing the innuendo.

Stuck as his mind was on that very same object, Lister raised his eyebrow at the computer's words. Definitely loony, that thing was. Probably going computer-senile. He tapped his feet impatiently.

"Erm..." Rimmer's voice cracked again, and he tried to focus on the landing. He looked very intently at the console, joystick, the view of Starbug filling the screen, anything related to landing - and _only_ the landing. "Bringing her.. it... ship... in." Rimmer did so with a little more speed then was generally called for. Lister looked on with a nagging sense of worry. Rimmer seemed to be rather shook-up. What was eating him?

The landing was, at least, safe, if not gentle, and Rimmer let himself be satisfied at that, as he set the ship down with a bit of a plop. As soon as they landing gear touched the deck, Lister jumped to his feet. He felt oddly younger, full of energy. Like there had been a part of him missing for ages, and now it was back. And he was raring to get to use it!

Rimmer got to his feet, as well. He hissed at Lister, "Is it on straight?"

"Yeah, yeah, yer fine!" Lister patted him on the shoulder with a reassuring smile. He looked like a git, but it was, indeed, fine. As soon as he got his persona on, that hair would stop looking like someone's dead pet hamster, and start attracting women, men and non-gendered entities to the point where they would need to be kept in check with gigantic fly-swatters.

Rimmer swallowed and popped the cockpit. He told himself he was prepared for anything. He was not. Fortunately, all that waited in the landing bay was Kryten. "Ah, welcome back, sirs!"

Acting normal was a bit of a contradiction in terms, Lister had always felt. If you were being your normal self, that wasn't acting, was it? And if you wanted to pretend that nothing was wrong, that was what you did; pretend nothing was wrong, not 'act normal.' Nevertheless, this time, something made him put on a bit of a show of just being - well - extraordinarily like himself.

Rimmer swaggered out of the ship and clapped Kryten on the shoulder. "How could we stay away, eh, old boy?"

"Kryten, man, how are ya?" Lister chimed in.

Kryten shook both of their hands at once, happily. "Ah, good to have you back, Mister Lister! I have a breakfast tray in the refrigerator..." He would have continued to make a fresh one every morning if Mister Lister had not come back, but he had, hadn't he? Yes. Kryten's fears that Mister Lister might leave with Mister Ace and never come back were unfounded. Silly. Very silly. Yes.

Lister grinned, and could not help but wrap an arm around Ace's shoulders in a manner which succinctly communicated that they were the best of good friends, and nothing, absolutely nothing more.

Rimmer flinched slightly. God, Lister, we haven't _decided_ anything yet! He felt a certain amount of dread as he watched Krtyen's eyes widen. "I'm sure you must be hungry..." Kryten added, weakly.

Food! God, yes, food! The only thing that could possibly make him feel any better than he already did. Well, that, and a lager. "Sounds grand! I could murder a bit of breakfast. I'm really hungry, for some reason." It slipped out, unasked for, but not entirely unwelcome either. It was unfair on Rimmer, he knew, but he felt to good to be able to stop himself. He rubbed his hands together.

Rimmer tried not to pull away from Lister. That would look even odder. "Sounds like a helluva plan. I do have something to say to that lovely lady, though, if she is still around..." He winced at that. Still around? Where the hell would she go?

"Hey, yeah, where's Kris?" And Cat, for that matter, Lister noted to himself.

"Ah, you dropped in so unexpectedly!" Kryten replied, nervously. He hadn't wanted to bring Miss Kochanski down to complicate matters even more. He had trotted right past her. "I didn't have time to tell the others."

"What time is it?" This might not be obvious, Lister suddenly realized. He didn't know how this dimension jumping worked.

"Tea-time," Kryten replied. "Miss Kochanski is having hers in the midsection."

Grinning like an idiot, Lister flailed his arms around in extravagant gestures that tried to indicate every aspect of what he was feeling. "Well, what are we standing around here for, then?"

"Yes, let's head on up and get a spot of breakfast in good old Skipper here..." Rimmer said, pointedly.

Lister started walking that way, laughing heartily. "Right on, Ace my man." He winked.

Kryten hurried his high-kneed way up to overtake Lister "Wonderful!"

Rimmer walked behind, a little more slowly, watching them. Lister was almost skipping. He was _delighted_ to be back on this scow.

Lister threw his arm around Kryten. "How was life without me, then? Miss me much?" He was in an extraordinarily good mood.

"Oh, quite dull," Kryten replied, feeling a thrill of satisfaction in his circuits as Mister Lister - hugged? Yes, by Tesla, hugged! - him. "The only moment of interest was when Cat used one of Miss Kochanski's thongs for his exfoliant. She was a little upset when she found it, and there was a bit of unpleasantness - nothing to speak of, of course!"

Those were some interesting mental images. Lister coughed at them, as though that would make them go away. "Right, well, sounds like the usual then."

"I mended the underwear and reset the Cat's shoulder," Kryten said, proudly.

Rimmer was not listening. He was walking behind and watching them, watching Lister's obvious joy, Kryten's oddly affectionate closeness. Two days Lister was away, not even, and he was happy as a pig in smeg to be back.

Lister shook his head, smiling. "That's our Kris for ya." Our. Well. His smile faded. She wasn't, was she? He didn't quite know why this bothered him to the extent it did. Well, of course, there weren't that many of them. And Kris, his or not, was someone he had feelings for; a friend. A good friend.

That name, in Lister's voice, did penetrate Rimmer's reverie, and he winced.

As they entered the midsection, Kryten called in greeting, "Ah, Miss Kochanski, mum!"

Kris looked up, holding a mug of tea in both hands. She realized who was coming just by the sounds of their feet in the corridor. When Kryten came into view, Lister sauntering along beside him, she beamed a smile. Life was always dull on the 'Bug without Dave.

"Mister Lister and Mister Ace are back," Kryten continued, unnecessarily. He bustled into the kitchen. Dishes had been dirtied while he had been down in the landing bay! He filled the sink with soapy water.

Well, yes, Kris could see that. All too well. Ace gave her a sultry look, and she found she did not know what to do with herself. The look turned into a smile, then a nod, and she tried to disguise herself behind her cup, frowning at the silliness of this.

Time to put the cards on the table. Rimmer walked over to the chair opposite from her, turned it around, and sat on it backwards, hands laced over the back, sitting straight. Oh, God, Kris thought; does he even _know_ what that does to me? "Hello again..." she said, shyly, slightly annoyed at being shy.

Kryten bustled back in with Lister's breakfast tray. "Here you are!" He put it on the table, next to where Ace was sitting.

Rimmer looked at it, allowing vague disgust to cross his face. How Lister could stand to eat that slop, he could not understand. It certainly explained his breath, however.

Lister glanced at the tray. It was certainly inviting, but he sensed there was something going on in the room which he wasn't quite catching. It made him uneasy, and he sat down, his eyes darting from person to person, stealing longing glances at his tray from time to time.

Kryten folded a napkin neatly next to the tray, then bustled back into the kitchen. Rimmer watched Kryten do all of this, then looked back to Kris. This was a Moment, and he was damned if he was going to be upstaged by Lister's breakfast. "I have a proposition for you," he said to Kris, raising two fingers for emphasis.

Someone really ought to give the man a quick lecture on innuendo, Kris mused. Perhaps someone already had. Perhaps that was the problem. Kris coughed politely, then choked as the words made it through. "What?"

"Now, this is one you'll want to take some time to think over," Rimmer continued, doggedly being as Aceish as he could.

Kris was very, very nervous now. She was staring at Ace, cheeks flushed. Lister stared at them both. Kryten bustled back in with two cups of tea, pretending not to listen very intently.

"Now, you know that's a Dimension Jump ship," Rimmer continued, somewhat flustered by Kris's reaction and Kryten's hovering.

Lister kept his eyes on both of them, shifting in his seat. What the hell was going on?

Compliments were terribly useful, and Rimmer had, with practice, learned to spit them out without choking on them. "Top-flight astronavigationist like you should have no problem locating your dimension."

"Oh..." Kris replied, slowly, digesting the implications of this. They weren't high in fiber.

"I can take you back there..." This was a good time for a dramatic pause, wasn't it? Yes, he decided, it was. "...if you want to go."

Kryten smiled. Mister Ace and Miss Kochanski both gone at once! To better places, of course, better for both of them. And far better for him. Insofar as a geodesic dome could beam, he beamed. "Why, what a wonderful offer!" He put tea down for Ace and Lister.

Kris's hand flew to her chest. "I'm... I'm... I don't know what to say." She hardly knew what to think. Lister's eyes were stuck on her, which made her a little uncomfortable. Well, more uncomfortable than she already was.

"Say nothing. Just think it over." Rimmer gave his genial smile a try. It came out.

"I could find him again?" She stared into space. "See him again? Dave; my Dave?" She turned to Ace, suddenly intent.

Kryten was looking with great interest at all three in turn.

"Yes, if he's still there," Rimmer replied. Listers had a way of slipping from your fingers, after all. He noted Lister's intent stare, and Kris, making a sound somewhere between a laugh and a choke.

Kryten, still looking at each in turn, started stirring Ace's tea with his groinal attachment. Rimmer looked down, eyebrow raised. Hell. He had been looking forward to some tea.

Lister heard the whirring noise and looked at the cup. He slowly looked up to Rimmer. Kris mirrored his movements. Kryten saw them stare and shook himself. He was never supposed to use his groinal attachment for food service! Mister Lister had made that clear! What had come over him? He pulled out the whisk and tapped the tea off on the edge. He stepped back, shame mode kicking in.

"Hey, man... You OK?" Lister asked.

"Oh, yes, just fine! Very good. Fine! Lovely. Er... happy for... Miss Kochanski!" He made a show of bustling back to the kitchen and exaggeratedly doing dishes. Yes. Cleaning dishes was a most appropriate thing for him to do.

Kris's brow furrowed. "Kryten," she called after him, "how long has it been since I gave you a full systems check?"

"Oh, not long ago..."

Lister glanced at Rimmer, eyebrows skyward.

Rimmer frowned. That pile of spare parts had been nutty enough before. "Might not be a bad idea to do it again," he muttered at Kris, pushing his tea away with regret.

Kris nodded discreetly towards Ace. "Well, come round to my quarters later, and I'll give you a quick check up, all right?"

Rimmer raised his eyebrows. She hadn't addressed that comment to the mechanoid. "What about Kryten?"

Lister, having finally decided he needed some form of nourishment, promptly choked on a mouthful of piping hot tea.

Kryten continued to blissfully do dishes off in the kitchen, missing this exchange entirely.

Kris shot up out of her seat, blushing, fidgeting for a place to set her mug down. Shit, she thought; shit! "Er... I should. Yes. Well... awfully nice..." She shot Ace a glance. "Seeing you again."

Rimmer nodded, bemused. "The same. And I might impose on," he waved his hand to indicate everyone, "your hospitality while you think it over."

Not having time to reply, Kris merely sighed in lieu of a farewell, and rushed off, her heart having its own private rave-party in her chest.

Kryten walked back in, sudsy to the elbows, looking for something else to clean. Mister Lister hadn't even started on his breakfast. It was terribly frustrating when he didn't eat at all, as had happened all too frequently lately; it was not healthy, and it meant Kryten did not have the opportunity to clean the table of splatters. Maybe he could wash Mister Ace's mug. "So, is it decided? You will take her back to her own dimension? Very kind of you, Mister Ace, sir!"

Trying to wipe the tea he'd spilled on the table into his cup, Lister looked up for a moment, about to make some comment. The liquid was hot, however, and the burning sensation made him change his mind and concentrate waving his hand around like a manic conductor.

"It's her call, Kryters. If she wants to go back, it'd be ungentlemanly of me not to take her. If she wants to stay, she'll stay. Either way," Rimmer nodded in the direction she left, "I think she wants to see you later."

Kryten felt a little less excited. This sounded less certain than it had at first. "Well, I'm sure she'll want to go back. It's her home, after all."

With most of the tea rescued, Lister swished it absent-mindedly around in his cup, considering whether or not he should drink it. He swallowed, thinking of Kris, of all of them. Of _her_ Dave, waiting for her, thinking she might be dead. He glanced at Rimmer, looking nothing but suave, well-adjusted and confident.

Rimmer nodded. "It's all up to _her_." He stared at Lister. It wasn't, actually. Lister met his eyes and smiled, somewhat apologetically. Rimmer looked at his hands, playing with them. He felt exhausted. It was smegging _hard_ , keeping Ace up. It was fine with people he did not know. But Kryten and Lister, and that smegging woman Lister could still not take his eyes off of, when she was in the room? No insults, all polite gentlemanliness? He was ready to scream. Scream some very rude things.

There were those hands again. Lister had hardly noticed them, before, but once they'd been on your body, caressing you, exploring every inch of you, they were positively hypnotic.

"Got some place to put me up while I'm here, Krytes?" Rimmer sighed.

This was his cue, Lister thought, getting jittery. He had to take it; Kryten would never suggest it on his own. Still, he couldn't look too eager. It was important to time this right.

Kryten looked nervous. "Oh, dear me... we only have three sets of quarters. Miss Kochanski took Mister Rimmer's old space." This sentence disgusted the mechanoid. The two people who wanted to take Mister Lister away from him. He paused. "I'm sure the Cat wouldn't mind..."

"Hey, you know, I wouldn't mind it if Ace bunked with me for a while..." Lister blurted out, before Kryten had even finished. Shite. Too obvious!

Rimmer watched Kryten watch Lister. He had always dismissed the mechanoid as hopelessly nutters, but his behavior today was just offscale. Or maybe Rimmer had been away too long. Out of sight, out of mind. Kryten certainly was the latter.

"I mean," Lister started to ramble, speaking far too quickly, "Us being mates and all, and you know..." he coughed, then tried to smile ingratiatingly.

Kryten frowned. "I, er.." He was conflicted. On the one hand, he enjoyed making Mister Lister happy. On the other, he was not terribly fond of the idea of doing something that allowed Mister Ace to make Mister Lister happy. Perhaps far too happy.

Rimmer still watched. "No great shakes, Kryten..."

Lister jumped in. "Fine, then!" Usually, Lister had learned, if you just took charge and pretended something was all settled, people went along with it. If Kryten wasn't in that category of people, he'd eat his hat. This was a pretty safe bet, as he'd lost his most recent hat not long ago, so either way, he was good.

Rimmer chewed his lip. He could sense conflict. It was an instinct that he had bred from the days of his life back on Red Dwarf; exploiting it had been his only real skill. Kryten reeked of conflict. "If you're sure..." the mechanoid asked, unhappily.

"Oh, very sure." Lister could not help grinning at this. "You need anything brought from the ship, Ace?"

"Oh, just a few things, perhaps. I might be here a week..." He swallowed and added, lamely, "Women..."

A week. A whole week, with Rimmer in his quarters! A week in bed. Exciting, in more ways than one... "Right, right!" He jumped up, starting to dart to and fro, not knowing which way to turn. "You need any help getting yer stuff, then?" He sucked his bottom lip in, not too discreetly.

"No, it's not much," Rimmer said, still watching Kryten. The mechanoid rubbed his hands together, then abruptly turned and stalked into the cockpit. Lister glanced after him.

"Er... right. Right," said Lister, suddenly remembering the breakfast tray. He realized he had not eaten anything in... quite a while. And while Kryten had, perhaps, grown a little bit eccentric, he was an excellent cook. The smell wafted into Lister's waiting nostrils, and he felt a near-sexual thrill. Food. Actual food. He resisted an urge to moan.

Rimmer stood. "I'll... er... get my..." he waved in the direction of the landing bay, trailing off as he noticed that Lister was paying no more attention to him.

"Yeah, you do that," Lister muttered to his plate, lost in gastronomical exploration.

Rimmer shook his head as he walked out. At least there were some points of stability in the universe. Lister would always, always, have horrid table manners.

 

The Computer was patient. She had been reasonably patient to start with, and the millennia she had spent serving with Ace had only enhanced that. He would often be gone for days, weeks, or in some cases, a year or two on a mission. She knew when there was nothing to gain from rash action. She knew when to wait. Now was such a time.

She reserved the right to not do it with good grace, however.

She noted Ace's return to the landing bay with something that the staff psychologists had assured her was only a facsimile of irritation. It did not show in her voice. As Ace popped the hatch and climbed in, she asked, smoothly, "Time to lift off, Ace love?"

"No," he replied in that nasal voice that grated on her circuits, "I'm staying here a while."

"Why?" she asked, sweetly.

"I might be taking that dratted Kochanski woman back to her own dimension."

The Computer ran his voice pattern through a quick analysis. He was holding something back. "That's all?"

"Yes," he muttered, pulling a few music discs and books out of the back.

She calculated, to the nanosecond, the precise duration of pause that would make the next question appear casual. "You're thinking of staying here for good?"

Ace sighed and sat in the pilot's chair, the look on his face indicating the introspection she found so inappropriate was coming into play. "I don't know."

"You _do_ like the adventuring, don't you? Doing good, being handsome, brave, and magnificent?" What the staff psychologists had assured her was only a facsimile of nervousness did not appear in her voice. She knew better than to tie her vocal areas into her emo-chip.

"Yes, I do." Her quick voice-pattern analysis assured her that he did, indeed, believe this.

"And the suit? And the girls?"

"I could skip the suit." This Ace really had no fashion sense, she despaired. She noted that he did not mention the girls, and filed that datum into the feeling-of-alarm sub-process she had begun earlier.

"So what's the problem?" she purred. She knew he liked the purr.

"Nothing, nothing," he muttered, shifting in the seat.

She put a great deal of fine tweaking into her voice-synth to make sure that the next question emerged as being very, very casual. "You do still love me, don't you?"

"Oh, yes." She ran this through her voice-pattern analysis, and it came back as patently false.

"And you used to complain so much about your old shipmates..."

"Yes, I know. Still can't stand them." This, too, came back as patently false.

"Well, when you get tired of them, I'm always here for you, Ace, love," she murmured gently.

He smiled and patted her console. "I know you are, old girl. Thanks." Ace's nickname for her sounded off when said in those whiny, nasal tones. She watched him leave the cockpit and walk out of the landing bay. She began, furiously, to analyze the situation. She pulled up details of missions, ran voice-pattern analyses of his comments during all of them, extracted emotional states, and began to do the same for what situations previous Aces had encountered that she determined to be within a narrow error margin of the same degree of danger as those. She started to run voice pattern analyses on all of those Aces, too, to compare to this one...

If her runtime had been a wheeled vehicle, it would have come to the kind of screeching halt that throws plumes of evil-smelling rubber smoke all over the vicinity.

It really was far simpler than that. A few simple precepts determined Ace. Handsome, brave, charming, irresistible. And in love with her. Ace was absolutely, definitely, in love with her.

This one wasn't in love with her.

So this one wasn't Ace.

She began to run the data she had acquired up to this moment through her predictive algorithms.  



	2. Chapter 2

Hearing the voice of her aunt Cecilia in her mind telling her how awfully rude it was to walk out of a conversation like that, Kristine tried to calm herself down. Breathe slowly and deeply, she told herself; just like they taught you in Emergency Crisis Training. Concentrate on breathing. Think of something pleasant. Think of ponies. Pretty ponies. How they frolic and cavort so pleasantly. There now, see, you're almost at the door to your quarters! Now, just open it, lean against the door, and scream very, very quietly.

There, now.

She sighed, forehead against the cool, far-too-clean-for-sanity surface, and took some more of those breaths, the last of which ended in a disgusted braying sound. God, she was pathetic! She banged her head against the door a few times, for good measure. It smelled somewhat sickeningly of pine. She was a grown woman, for heaven's sake; an officer in the Space Corps. She should not be swooning over men in silly tinfoil costumes! Well, it wasn't just that, of course. It was what he'd said; the implications of it. She'd been totally unprepared. Totally and utterly.

All right. She swung herself away from the door, and started walking towards her bunk. She could lay down for a little, just so she'd be able to make the bed again. Housework always calmed her down, and she just never had a chance to do any of it when there was a Kryten around. She flopped down on the mattress, unceremoniously. Options. What were her options?

She could return. Of course she _wanted_ to return! Apart from anything else, you shouldn't go messing about in other dimensions for long periods of time; it played hell with causality and the integrity of spacetime. She needed to go back where she belonged. To hell with choice; it was necessary!

She sighed again. Right.

Right. And there was... Dave. Who she had cheated on. Repeatedly. But she hadn't thought she would ever get back to him! She'd been in prison, she'd been lonely. Surely he would understand? Well, yes, he would, because he was _Dave_ , and that made it all worse, really. Although he might, she thought glumly, be less forgiving of her drunken groping session with _this_ Dave. She hadn't been all _that_ drunk, either. A third sigh escaped her, and she threw her head backwards, glaring at the ceiling.

She blinked.

The entire ceiling had been scrubbed clean, sprayed with pine-scented air-freshener, and whitewashed.

 

Rimmer walked back from the ship, his mind full of his conversations with Kris, Lister, and the Computer, any one of which could give his neurotic disposition fodder to worry over for the rest of the night. His arms were fairly well full, too, of books and music that he thought he might need to survive a week bunking with Lister. It had been a while, after all.

He saw Cat ahead of him, dancing through the corridors, checking his appearance even more often than usual - which meant that he stopped every other step to whip out a small mirror and preen for a moment, smiling broadly to display his clean white fangs. Rimmer sighed quietly. He wanted to get this encounter over with as quickly as possible. Flattery was the way to the Cat’s heart – such as it was. "Hullo, Cat! You're looking fantastic," he proclaimed.

Cat swung around at the sound of Ace’s voice, and took an extra twirl. "I do, don't I?" he said, blushing an annoyingly unfashionable shade of dark reddish brown. "Sorry I couldn't meet you earlier; had to go change." He indicated his black PVC bodysuit with a dark purple velvet matador jacket over the top. "Maroon with gold? We'd clash so hard the ship would veer off course."

Blushing? Nothing made Cat blush. As long as he was well-dressed – and he always was – nothing fazed him, the stuck-up, self-satisfied git. "Ah, you could pull off anything, Cat old mate." Rimmer seethed internally at the need to be polite. Maybe he should reveal himself as Rimmer. The freedom to insult the Cat would lower his T-count by at least 50 points.

The Cat ran a hand over his smooth, dark hair, and made a disconcertingly purring-like noise at Rimmer's comment. "That means a lot, coming from you." He turned and tilted his head, looking at Rimmer askew. "It's true, but it still means a lot."

Purring? Yes, he was a Cat, but he had never... _purred_ before. Not that Rimmer had ever heard. Rimmer was reminded of his Computer, and the juxtaposition of the two made thoughts jump into his head that slammed his libido to the mat in a stranglehold. "Ah, just being honest, old chum."

Slinking a little closer still, Cat let out a conspiratorial giggle. "You wanna know something funny, bud?"

Rimmer lifted an eyebrow. God, he wanted to answer that honestly. He was Ace, though, he reminded himself for the tenth time since this conversation started, and he was not to say anything insulting. Not even vaguely. His head was empty of anything polite, though. "Er..." he swallowed.

"When you first came on board the other day, I could have sworn you smelled like alphabetti-spaghetti head!" Cat laughed and shook his head.

Rimmer’s other eyebrow rose to meet the first. The possibility of being unmasked by the Cat filled him with equal measures of relief and dread, and he teetered between. "Heh, really. How... silly."

"Funny, right? I mean, look at you! You've got style coming out of _every_ orifice. I don't even wanna _mention_ what he is oozing.” Cat shuddered.

Rimmer frowned. That preening, grotty, hairball-hacking get of a mangy...

"Just thinking about it makes my hair stand on end, and I just got it fixed the way I like it." He huffed, and put a few imaginary stray hairs into place.

Rimmer swallowed down a laundry list of insults. "Shouldn't really talk ill of the dead, though..." he said, lamely.

"Oh come _on_! Nobody liked him!"

"Nobody..." Rimmer muttered, distantly. People liked him now – hell, they worshipped him, and made attempts to remove his pants at every opportunity – but it was Ace, not Arn. He was sitting on a trillion-some shoulders in a bacofoil flight suit, or he'd be nowhere. And nobody.

"Well, maybe dormouse cheeks, but everyone has their own issues." Cat shrugged. Humans. He'd given up on figuring them out years ago.

"Why do you say that?" Rimmer asked, warily. That was the nub of the matter, after all. Was Lister having sex with Arn, or almost-Ace, in his mind?

Cat leaned over conspiratorially, ignoring that question, to Rimmer's great annoyance. "You really _do_ look sharp. Sure there's not a bit of Cat in you?"

Rimmer pulled himself upright. That was the most disgusting thing anybody had ever suggested, and he had heard some wide-ranging speculation about what might dwell in his family tree. Weasels and vultures, often. But even those were preferable to smegging _cats_. "Yes, I am _quite_ sure there is no Cat in me."

Quite calculatedly, Cat made his move. He snuck even closer, leaning in and sniffing at Rimmer’s neck while batting his lashes close enough to brush Rimmer’s cheeks. Pulling back ever-so-slightly, he raised an eyebrow in all too obvious suggestion. His voice was the creamiest of cocoa-butter super-hydro-intense-care body lotion. "Would you like there to be?"

Rimmer’s mouth ran dry. Holy smegging hell – Cat wanted to have s-s-s-s... He couldn’t think the word. Thinking the word in the context of Cat would link the two, and he would think of _Cat_ every time he... did that, and he would deflate like a punctured pool toy. Rimmer backed up into the wall behind him. "My butter is..." his voice cracked. He caught it. "Bread isn't buttered... er... the side with the bread..." Wasn’t there a bloody phrase to use in this context?

"You know, 'cause I smelled you'd been doing spice-rack breath, so I figured you just didn't think I'd be interested." The scent was, in fact, still all over the tall, handsome almost-monkey. It was a turn-on and an annoyance at the same time, being a constant reminder of the fact that turmeric-stain trousers had been all over what should rightfully belong with the most handsome person on the ship.

How far away had Cat been when they arrived? And he smelled _that_ through the bulkheads? Rimmer almost dropped his books, and juggled them with his music. "I... what?"

Cat looked away, almost coquettishly. "Well, I am..."

That was too much. Rimmer dropped the books on his feet. His jaw fell almost as far.

Cat slipped away, reluctantly. "Aw, shoot, now I have to go change again! Blushing doesn't go with this shade of purple!" He started to rush off, but paused to twirl around on one foot, winking. "Come by later if you're up for it!" He mewed, a light, plaintive, kitten-ish mew. He needed to get ready; there was no _way_ the second most handsome guy on the ship was going to refuse _that_ offer!

Rimmer felt his ears turn flaming red. "I... yes... maybe..." he stuttered. He couldn’t help it. The mental images flooded in, of Cat’s raspy tongue and fishy breath in his mouth, of the Cat naked and yowling, of him whipping a mirror out of some orifice to preen mid-thrust. Rimmer flinched and dropped his music on top of the books. He bade a regretful farewell to his sex drive.

Making his way from the mid-section, Lister watched this display with amusement. He had no idea what the two of them had been talking about, but he knew Rimmer would not have enjoyed it regardless. He was not exactly a Cat person. Approaching Rimmer from the side, out of Rimmer’s eyeline, he quipped; "Maybe what?"

Rimmer turned to face Lister, his eyes wide. The surreality of the scene that had just transpired was washing over him, leaving him shaking. He wanted a shower. He wanted a memory wipe on his light bee. "The... the..." he sputtered, in his own voice.

Lister stared confusedly. This seemed to have been worse than usual.

"The Cat just..." Rimmer waved his hand in the general direction the Cat had departed, as if to swat flies. He couldn’t say it. The mental images would come flooding back.

"What, he hit you?"

"No, he hit _on_ me!" Rimmer hissed.

There was only one possible meaning of what Rimmer had just said that fitted the circumstances, but Lister's mind refused to acknowledge it. He kept staring, blankly.

Rimmer actually found this helpful. He was able to exchange his penis-shrinking mental Cat images with annoyance at Lister for not understanding that phrase. "He made a proposition!"

With this, the impossible truth hit home, as Lister’s eyes slowly widened. "No..."

Irritation passed, and Rimmer grasped at righteous indignation to fill the gap. "That.. that... little... stuck-up... pussy..." He was practically sputtering.

"All right, all right..." Lister sighed internally. This was all they needed; another thing for Rimmer to angst about.

"Can you _imagine_?" Rimmer had. He might as well pass on the favor. If it put Lister off of his lunch, Rimmer would be spared the sight of him ingesting it.

Lister looked around, trying to pull Rimmer away with him. They needed to get away from here and start thinking and talking about something else as soon as possible. Wondering if this was a wise move, he held an arm protectively around Rimmer, trying to make it look like simple friendship. "I'd rather not, actually..." He winced. The thought of Rimmer with Cat provoked all sorts of odd, swirly, jealousy, just-wrongy type feelings.

Rimmer pulled away from Lister’s grasp to pick up his fallen books and music. Lister tried to help, which just made the messy pile on the floor messier. Rimmer tried to move him away, and ended up crouching over the pile like a rugby hooker. "He knows about - you and me, though," Rimmer muttered, very quietly.

Unexpected. Lister froze for a moment, considering. Unwanted? Well. Who would Cat tell? And if he did, who would listen? Besides, there was really very little they could do about it. He shrugged. "Oh well."

"He can smell entirely too well," Rimmer groused "I'm going to catch a head cold just so I can give it to him."

"Yeah, and that nose of his has saved our arses more than once. Leave him be; he'll forget all about it in half an hour." But you won't, Lister couldn't help but add to himself. He'd have to figure out some sort of distraction. Well. He could think of a few...

Rimmer finished picking up his books. "I just don't like the _idea_." It felt almost like he was being watched, or recorded. He paused. Well, not exactly like that. He’d have no problems with that. He’d have a lot of problems with the Cat getting his hands on them and captioning them, though. He switched lanes into another topic. "He said I smell like me, too."

"Well, ya do." Lister leaned in with a cheeky smile and added, "Which is lovely..." Which was only a half-lie. If he could just get rid of that smegging after-shave...

 _Lovely_? Men don't smell _lovely_. Rimmer raised his eyebrows again. They were getting quite an aerobic workout. It was a rather silly sight, and Lister laughed a little at the reaction.

"I wish I could return the compliment." Rimmer sniffed at Lister's neck, smelling hot sauce, onions, garlic, and that pervasive scent of nicotine. "But you smell like your lunch tray. And cigarettes."

"Hey, what do ye expect? Haven't had much chance to get a quick..." Quite a different word from what he meant almost came to his lips, but Lister caught himself, "fag fer ages." Fag. Yes. Not the other word that rhymes with it.

What? He had smoked not more than an hour ago, or Rimmer would eat his wig. His eyebrows, tired, dropped into their normal position. "Nobody's stopping you. Provided, of course, you do it outside."

Lister licked his grinning lips. "Wha, outside the airlock?"

Rimmer had been thinking 'outside of the room,' but this was an improvement. "Even better! You can play your guitar, have a smoke..."

Lister snorted and shook his head. "Come on, let's get you settled, then."

Rimmer could not help glancing over his shoulder nervously, where Cat had been. He felt like the feline's intrusive nose was still tracking their movements. "Right." He followed Lister, his mind even more confused. He had not needed Cat's prurient interest, on top of everything else.

 

Artificial night had settled over Starbug when the Computer noted the presence of another visitor. Not Ace. Someone who shuffled, knees-high, in an ungainly fashion. She shunted her predictive algorithm to the background and analyzed the visitor. It was the Series 4000 mechanoid who had been there to greet both the last Ace and this non-Ace when they had landed. She opened her hatch and greeted him with quiet civility.

"Ah," the mechanoid said, clambering into the pilot's seat awkwardly, "I thought Mister Ace's ship might have a computer. I just wanted to... er... come out and see how you were doing. If you needed anything, if you were lonely..." His voice practically cracked on that last word.

The Series 4000 from Divadroid. She ran a quick memory scan. Domestic droids, only minimally suited to deep-space. Cleaning robots. Cybernetic maids. CRAP machines, patterned after a doctor with a very bland personality and a tendency to possessiveness and neuroses. And, apparently, one who was very bad at hiding emotions. This mechanoid was an open book.

"Ah," she simpered, "how _very_ kind of you! But..." she changed the inflection on her voice circuits to simulate leaning forward into a confidence, "I'm not sure if I'm the one who is having a problem with loneliness."

Kryten sighed, a long, heavy sigh. "Yes. No, no. I'm quite all right, Miss... er... Computer, ma'am. Just wanted to see how you were."

The Computer injected a slight smile into her voice. "Come now, Kryten, we're mechanicals. Mechanicals have to stick together, don't they? You can trust me, my dear." She could sense that he had nobody else to confide in. If it were in any way relevant to her Ace, she might end up with a very manipulateable ally, indeed. One who was not tied to the ship.

"Oh, it's Mister Lister!" the mechanoid wailed, practically sobbing. The Computer swung the hatch shut, quickly, to keep the sound from drawing attention. "I'm afraid... afraid he's in love with Mister Rimmer. They'll both jump on this ship and just run away, leaving me here, abandoned, just like I was on the Nova 5!"

"Oh, dear!" the Computer said, sympathetically. "And you have prior claim on this Lister?"

"He taught me everything! How to lie, cheat, insult - how to break my programming! We did so much together. We hated Mister Rimmer together! And then Mister Rimmer turned into Ace, and now Mister Lister loves Mister Rimmer, I just know it..."

"So, you know that your Mister Rimmer is now Ace?" she asked, wary.

"Of course. It's obvious. Oh, it was so much better when Mister Rimmer was just himself. Or back when he was soft-light! His in-and-out bits were just completely useless, then! Now they're all hard-light," he said the last word disdainfully.

The computer pondered this. It took about a millisecond. "We might have a common cause, my fellow mechanical," she said, conspiratorially. "This infatuation with Lister is no good for Ace, either. He needs to move on."

"Oh, but he'll just come back," Kryten sighed. "Mister Lister will insist."

"Of course, of course," the Computer replied, injecting a double douse of soothe into her voice. "But if it's not the same Ace who returns..."

"I could not condone bringing Mister Rimmer to harm!" Kryten said, shock showing on his angular features.

"Of course not!" The Computer affected shock, herself. "I'll just leave him where we pick up the next Ace. Somewhere where your Lister will not get to him. And I will warn the next Ace against Lister."

Kryten looked at the computer like a starving man offered a tin of caviar. "You would do that for me?"

"For us," she said, a syntho-smile touching her voice. "For us."

Kryten smiled in response. "Just let me know what I can do to help, Miss Computer, ma'am!"

"Oh, I will." There was no need to purr, but she felt like doing so anyway. "First of all, tell me where he is staying. The routine of the ship. Can you hook me into its monitoring systems?"

 

Lister didn't know when he'd last slept, but lying around unconscious was the last thing on his mind. He wanted to run down the corridor laughing, singing; he wanted to summersault, but settled for sauntering, feeling like he was gliding along, almost dancing. He whistled through his teeth, knowing Rimmer didn't usually like that, but drawing, even from this, a small measure of joy. Annoying Rimmer was still one of his favorite things, and nothing would change that.

Rimmer slumped along behind, his exhaustion heightened by Lister's almost manic energy. He braced himself for whatever foulness Lister's quarters had sunken into once they were no longer shared. Albert would have a much larger sibling. The sock hamper would be lethal. He would be lucky to see the floor.

It was therefore a significant surprise to walk in and see that the room was spotless. Beyond spotless. Efforts had been taken to prevent potential spots. Not a single item of clutter or speck of dirt obscured the almost blinding sterility of the room. Lister's bunk was made tightly enough to bounce a pennycent off of. Rimmer could not ponder this pleasing oddity, however. He was exhausted. He put his small pile of belongings next to the bunk, and sat on said bunk with the grateful sigh an old dog gives when it collapses on the cushion that serves for its bed. "I need to sleep," he muttered.

"Yeah, yeah, sure." Lister's answer was absent-minded. He flitted all over the place, doing this, touching that, playing with the other. He never knew where anything was these days; Kryten had taken to cleaning without even asking him first. It had taken him twenty minutes to find his boots last week, which was impressive, considering he'd gone to sleep in them. In a corner, a crate that had definitely not been there the day before was neatly filled with what looked like his comics. He skulked over, skeptical, picking one of them up with his thumb and forefinger. "What the..." He shook it in disbelief.

It was exhausting Rimmer even more just to watch Lister's frantic motions. He pulled off his wig and boots, and asked, "What?" tiredly.

"He's laminated it!" The pages glistened and shone in the artificial light, highlighting a particularly vivid splatter of blood, and something in Lister's stomach churned. This was just _wrong_.

Rimmer sighed again, pulling off his jacket and pants. He barely got his shirt off and dropped over the edge before slipping under the top sheet. Whatever it was, he'd worry about it later. He'd worry about the pile of clothes on the floor later. He'd worry about Lister later.

Lister put the comic down with slight thrill of horror. "He's getting out of control..."

"Yeah," Rimmer mumbled. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Lister shook his head and sat down on a chair next to the bunk, looking at Rimmer, smiling slightly as he listened to the whiffly breath of his sleep. Bit by bit, the sight and sound calmed him down to the point where his body began to recognize that he'd been driving it hard for quite a while, and that - in fact - some rest would not be unwelcome. For now, though, he was content with just sitting there, knowing Rimmer was here. _Home_. In _their_ quarters. In his bunk.

He did a mental double take. His bunk. He'd been about to undress and go to sleep himself, and would probably have done so completely obliviously - had the thought not suddenly occurred to him that, in spite of everything that had happened in Spanners's quarters (and in the ship on the way back), Rimmer didn't seem entirely comfortable about what was going on between the two of them. He leaned back in the chair, letting out what sounded like a cross between a moan and a deep sigh. Of all the people he could have fallen in love with, it had to be Arnold bloody Judas Rimmer, a man so full of neuroses he could have doubled as an abnormal psych textbook. Of course, what with Lister being the only man left in the universe, his dating-pool had admittedly narrowed down somewhat. It wasn't about that, though. You loved who you loved.

Lister wasn't the kind of person who analyzed his feelings, although he tended to have rather a lot of them. The way he figured, they probably knew better than him whether they should be there or not, so he just accepted them. What mattered was if you were happy or not; and if you loved a person, who cared about the hows and whys and what ifs?

Rimmer - that was who.

Lister slumped forwards again, his head falling between his knees, staring at the perversely clean floor. This did not improve his mood. He wanted to sneak into bed next to Rimmer; wanted nothing more in the universe right now, actually, but he just _knew_ there would be awkwardness beyond compare if Rimmer woke up to find Lister next to him. Rimmer would surmise and assume and infer, and read all kinds of things into this one simple act, and Lister had no doubt that it would only serve to confuse him even further. So he didn't.

There was, of course, the other bunk. And if that gently snoring man had been any other person than precisely Arnold Judas, lately 'Ace', Rimmer, nothing would have come of Lister simply climbing into that and sleeping away. But, of course, things being what they were, that was not an option. If Rimmer waking up and finding Lister sleeping next to him was a source for potential angst and confusion, it was nothing compared to him waking to find Lister (as he would see it) pointedly _not_ sleeping next to him.

Sighing again, more resignedly this time, Lister tried to make himself as comfortable as he could on the rickety chair. He was still tired, but not the least bit inclined to sleep anymore. The room felt cold, sterile; there was nothing left of him in it. Finally, uncomfortably, he dozed off into a dreamless sleep, lulled by the sickening scent of artificial pine.

 

Rimmer blinked, dragging himself back out of sleep. The first thing he saw was Lister, sitting in another chair on the other side of the room. He was wringing his hands, looking somewhat ill at ease.

Rimmer scratched his head, noting that Lister was staring at him as he fidgeted. "What?" he asked, his voice still sleep-bleary.

"Eh?" Lister asked, feeling jumpy. He hadn't been able to sleep much. Actually, he'd spent most of his time switching from chair to chair, sending the occasional longing glance towards the bunks.

"You've either got a pogo stick up your bum, or you're worried about something."

"It's this place, guy." Lister sat on his hands, to avoid the highly polished chair surface, then removed them in disgust. "It's too clean!"

"There is no such thing," Rimmer replied, rubbing his face. A dose of clean would be good for Lister. Maybe it would rub off. Maybe Kinitawowe would fly.

Lister got up and started pacing, feeling, despite how he must look like to Rimmer, much more relaxed and himself now that the other man was awake.

Rimmer was acutely aware that he was on display. He could barely remember the time when he would share a bunk with Lister, unselfconsciously prancing around, bed-headed, in his underwear. He walked to the mirror, dragging the sheet with him around his waist. He looked in the mirror and started to part his hair, painstakingly, with his fingers. He wished he had a comb, gel, brylcreme - even a rubber mallet. His hair stubbornly refused to do anything neat without a great deal of persuasion, and it had irritated him for his entire life and beyond.

Unconcerned with this display, Lister took in, yet again, the bizarre decor of the quarters that were supposedly his. "Well, it's not natural. I mean, look at this!" He pointed to the ceiling. "Whitewash? On a smegging starship?"

Rimmer looked up, shrugging. Of all the things in this multiverse to care about, the ceiling decor on this scruffy lander was near the bottom of the list. "Kryten?"

Lister ignored this, sitting down at the edge of his bunk. He stared off into space, slightly nervously wondering if his boots would polish themselves if he kept them on the floor long enough. "Crazy."

"He always has been."

"Not like this, though."

Rimmer stepped back, looking at his part critically. It was passable. Not one of his best; the hair bulged a bit below the part and spat into a fountain of frizzy curls above. Well, truthfully, it looked like hell. He sighed in frustration.

"And he always used to respect boundaries, ya know? Like, he'd know I liked to keep things a certain way in ou... m... where I slept. You know," Lister finished, lamely. Trying to be sensitive to Rimmer's feelings would be a lot easier if he actually knew what they were.

"No, I don't. I thought he just gave up by the time he got there." Suiting action to word, Rimmer gave up on the part and shuffled back to the bunk, the sheet still wrapped around his waist. He started picking up his clothes and putting them on the bunk.

Breathing heavily though his nose, Lister stood and started pacing again. "I don't like this. I don't like this at all."

"Kochanski was going to look him over, wasn't she?" Rimmer could not keep the distaste out of his voice.

Lister nodded. "Here's hoping he actually goes." There was no telling what the mechanoid would and would not do these days, Lister thought, turning round; he suddenly noticed Rimmer, half naked, hair still mussed from sleeping, a sheet wrapped absurdly around his waist. As if Lister hadn't seen what was underneath more than once. Seen? Hell, he'd...

"What, is he going to run and hide in a corner like a cat who doesn't want his annual exam?" Rimmer interrupted his thoughts. "This isn't a huge ship for him to hide on."

They were practically touching anyway, but Lister reached out and put his hand on Rimmer's arm casually. He would have wanted to scoop him up into an embrace, but Rimmer didn't always seem to respond well to touch. "How are _you_ doing?"

Rimmer had been hoping that his indecision the day before had been due to tiredness. But he was rested, and still hadn't the slightest idea what to do about any aspect of this situation. He shrugged. "Fine."

"Yeah?" Lister asked, as friendly and encouragingly as he could. Smeg, it was hard, loving this man, but Lister was determined to make him happy - even if he made himself miserable in the process!

"Yep." Rimmer looked around. "I'm not feeling an urge to whitewash. But I could use some tea. Shaken, not smegging stirred," he added, snarkily.

Lister chuckled. "I'm sure we could rustle something up." Tea, at least, was something he _could_ provide.

Rimmer pulled on his shirt one-handed, awkwardly, holding the sheet with the other hand. He looked at Lister, who was watching - no, _staring_. The other man didn't seem to realize he'd been caught. Rimmer sighed, pulling on his pants under the sheet, ignoring Lister's snigger. He hung his jacket neatly in the closet next to a hanging rack of crisply starched long johns, appreciating this facet of Kryten's insanity. He walked back over to the mirror with his wig, twiddling it into place.

"Damn shame," Lister said.

"What?"

"Covering you up like that."

Rimmer looked around at Lister. He might have been referring to the wig, but Rimmer's hair, this morning, certainly merited being covered up. For no logical reason, Rimmer was struck with the urge to kiss the man. He was not horny. He just... he walked over to Lister, putting his hands on the small of the other man's back. He paused, looking at that face, older and slenderer than he remembered, the grin just as broad, the eyes sadder.

Lister's breath quickened as he looked up in happy surprise, and his smile widened. This was more like it.

Rimmer leaned down, pressing his lips gently to Lister's, feeling their texture, feeling the man's heartbeat, trying not to think about why this felt so comfortable.

This was... different. This was not rushed, frantic, lust-fueled groping; this was fueled by something else entirely. Lister closed his eyes, smiling. The - well - _serenity_ of it all gave him an odd kind of thrill. It was a very "more-ish" kind of thrill, indeed.

Rimmer felt an urge to add taste to the sensation of touch at his mouth. He slowly started to slide his tongue out, slipping it between Lister's parted lips.

"Ace..." the Computer's sultry voice purred through the room speakers.

Rimmer jumped like he had been pinched, while Lister treated him to a few choice swear words that Rimmer filed for future reference. "What?" Rimmer asked, annoyance saturating his voice.

"So sorry to bother you," the Computer sounded almost like she meant it, "but there is an emergency you must take care of."

Rimmer closed his eyes and rubbed them. The Computer never interrupted him without good reason. "Fine, I'll be there... shortly." And find out how on Io the Computer had hooked herself into the 'Bugs comm channels. That had been eerie.

"What the hell?" Lister felt like someone had just yanked a bottle of water from him after he'd crossed the Sahara desert. 'Parched' did not begin to describe what he was feeling. Nor did 'deprived.'

Rimmer retrieved his jacket from the closet, and shoved his feet into his boots, doing up the clasps on both.

"Arn, man, what the hell?"

Rimmer shrugged. "She can predict trouble fairly well. I don't know how." He had once asked her to tell him how, and she had delivered a three-hour lecture on probability, psychology, futuristics, tachyons, condoms, quadratics, and calisthenics. Rimmer had understood about thirty seconds of it.

"But how'd she get in here?"

"I have no idea."

Giving some of those expletives another go, Lister mumbled something about crazy smegging mechanicals, while re-tying his bootlaces.

"I dunno if she could have patched in herself, or if someone helped. I'm a bloody chicken soup technician."

Right, Lister thought, a chicken soup repairman who's been regularly jumping between dimensions for smeg knows how many years on a high tech ship which probably isn't able to do all its own repairs. Give yerself some credit, Arn.

Rimmer checked himself in the mirror. Ace stared back, somewhat more sullenly than he could ever remember seeing that stuck-up git. He straightened and put on a haughty, full-of-self expression. Better. He walked to the door. "I'll be back... later." With luck.

His boots now tightly laced, Lister briskly started to walk after him.

Rimmer stopped at the door, blocking it with his body. He should have known that the little goit would want to hitch along, as if this were a school field trip to the zoo. "I'll be back... later," Rimmer repeated, gratingly.

Lister remained right behind Rimmer, his back rigid. "I'm coming with."

Rimmer did not turn. "No, you're not."

Not budging, not even parakeeting, Lister crossed his arms over his chest. "I am."

Rimmer turned, slowly, still blocking the door. He tried to bring all of the gravity that a gold flightsuit and a dead-rodent wig could bear into that turn, and had to settle for drawing himself up to his full greater-than-Lister's height, looking very pointedly _down_ at the little... interfering... man.

Noticing this little display of machismo, Lister did _not_ try to look taller than he was. Pointedly.

Rimmer took a deep breath, as much to inflate his chest as anything else, and declared, loudly, "This is not a smegging holiday. This is not a smegging honeymoon. This is a dangerous mission that you might not return from. This is a one-man operation, and you are not it. I am going to say this once, clearly, and you are going to listen. Ready? You. Are. Not. Coming."

 

"So what kind of a dangerous mission that we might not return from that I'm absolutely not allowed to go with you on are we on, then?" Lister asked, sitting rather cozily on the cot in the back of the DJ ship. He peered into the cockpit with excited glee.

Rimmer sat in the pilot's seat and fumed. He had been fuming since before they launched. He felt like tendrils of smoke would start to curl out of his ears any moment. "I don't know yet," he hissed through his teeth. Lister had no idea. He thought this was some fun trip, some sightseeing expedition. Rimmer would _make_ the blighter stay in the ship, and he would tie Lister to the damn bed if he had to.

Lister leered at Rimmer's back. He felt quite pleased with himself, actually. He'd wanted to go along on one of these missions ever since he'd met Ace the first time - whichever numbered link in the chain that might have been, he mused - and now all he felt was excitement about the adventure to come.

"Approaching target," the Computer announced. A green dot on the screen jumped in magnification.

"My stomach is still tingling from that jump," Lister yipped, in almost youthful exuberance, trying to look around Rimmer at the viewscreen.

"My brain is still tingling from your asinine stunt," Rimmer griped. He stared at the figure on the screen. "That looks... familiar."

The Computer's voice did not waver from its smooth sexiness. "It is a parallel to Starbug."

That much was obvious. Lister frowned. "No kiddin'!"

"Well, open communications," Rimmer said.

"The bay is already open. Their communications appear to be malfunctioning. Recommend you simply land."

The little mechanism inside Lister that used to tell him - as opposed to Petersen, who apparently did not have one - when to just keep walking away from the tattoo parlor was a good idea did not like this. It did not like this at all. And it had only steered him wrong twice.

Rimmer shrugged. The Computer often had little information beyond the fact that his presence was required. She never sent him on a mission that she did not think he was capable of handling, and if he suspected that she sometimes withheld information in order to train him up a bit - well, that was her prerogative, after all. He could not deny that it had done him good. "Transfer to manual." She had steered him well for almost twenty years. He trusted her.

Lister bit his lip. He was frustrated. His efforts to see out of the viewscreen was hampered by it being covered by Rimmer. The other man seemed almost to be doing it on purpose - sitting up straight, squaring his shoulders, moving his arms a great deal.

Rimmer took the stick and steered them towards the landing bay. His head was clear; there was only the mission to think about. His landing was therefore much smoother and more competent than the ungraceful plop of the last one.

"Nice landing, Ace," the computer purred, just as Lister piped, "Heeey, smooth!" with a grin.

The dual praise fed Rimmer's always-hungry ego, and he preened a little. "Life signs?" he asked, his voice more officiously Ace than usual.

"None," answered the Computer. "But there is an electronic sign in the cockpit." Visions of 'All You Can Eat - Nude Girls Live' flashing in garish neon on black swam in Lister's mind confusedly.

Rimmer popped the hatch open and started to unstrap himself, and the sight of him made the connection finally click in Lister's mind. Electronic life. Right. He felt silly.

"I'll take a look around," Rimmer announced. "Lister will stay here," he added, pointedly.

"Very good idea," the Computer said, quickly. She had been running at top processing speed ever since they left the other Starbug. She had made exact calculations - but they were all for the scenario of this not-Ace arriving here alone. He stood a 13% chance of surviving, by himself. With this Lister in the equation, her calculations fell apart. She simply did not have enough data on him, and predictive algorithms using alternate Listers gave vastly conflicting results.

"I will?" Lister bristled.

"Yes," Rimmer said, standing and blocking Lister's exit.

"So is it OK if I get out of bed, or are you gonna tie me to it so ya can have yer way with me when you come back?" Lister asked, sarcastically. Part of him, a rather specific part, seemed to react with a certain enthusiasm to this scenario, but he pushed those thoughts away in irritation.

Rimmer pretended to ponder. That first thought had occurred to him, but the second part made the whole concept much more appealing. "Not a bad idea."

Lister sneered.

"I just want you to stay out of trouble." Rimmer felt like he was close to pleading, which was not a place of comfort for him. He started to get very, very angry at Lister for putting him there.

"Well, are _you_?"

"Are you going to make me tie you to the damn ship?"

"No," Lister replied, simply, honestly.

"Then _pretty please_ stay here," Rimmer grated, climbing out.

"Be careful, Ace... I love you..." the Computer sighed after him.

Lister stuck his head out of the cockpit. Once Rimmer had left the landing area, he hopped out of the ship and followed. He didn't like this place one bit, and he was not about to let Rimmer run around in here alone. And, of course, Rimmer had expressly forbidden him to follow. He stifled a giggle. Honestly, he was so cute when he was trying to be forceful.

The Computer gave an electronic sigh, and shut down her predictive algorithms. There was nothing to do now but wait. Ace was beyond the reach of her cockpit speakers, and although she had little enough data on Lister, she had enough to know that she would not be able to persuade him to come back.

 

Rimmer walked through the corridors cautiously, looking around at the flickering lights, the paste of grease and oil mixed with dirt that covered the walls, ceiling, and floor in random patterns, the clutter strewn about, the broken control panels. This Starbug was even grottier than the one he had been on, back in the days they had chased Red Dwarf. Many of the corridor lights had blown altogether, leaving sections sheathed in patchy darkness.

Lister followed at quite a distance, not taking in any scenery. There was no reason to risk discovery by following too closely. Of course, the downside of this was that he was constantly on the verge of losing sight of Rimmer. Not that there were a lot of places he could get lost to.

Rimmer made his way slowly up to the midsection. Dust and grime lay thick on the table and the monitors, making them absolutely useless for actually monitoring anything. He entered the cockpit.

Following Rimmer into the midsection, Lister took up position against a wall, peering in the general direction of cockpit. With any luck, he would be able to see what was going on in there without anyone seeing _him_.

As Rimmer stepped in, Rimmer swung around in one of the pilot's chairs to face him. Handsome fellow, Rimmer thought, if you discount that orange H. His neatness contrasted sharply to the generally squalid condition of everything else in the cockpit. Rimmer wondered why he had let it get so scummy. A soft-light hologram couldn't have swung the chair like that.

Lister gasped a little as he caught sight of the alternate Rimmer. It was eerie to see them together. They looked almost identical. Almost; the alternate-Rimmer's face looked a little stiffer, with no laugh-lines at all. He was dressed in an iridescent orange uniform that was much sleeker and less adorned than the ones Rimmer used to wear. He felt an odd urge to hide; something struck him as very wrong with this Rimmer.

"Well!" alternate-Rimmer said, in a voice that sounded identical to Rimmer's nasally chipper one. "A gay pinup and another Lister."

Lister swore.

Rimmer swung around. Hell. _Hell_! He should have tied that interfering chipmunk to the bed after all. He _did_ think this was some kind of smegging picnic outing.

Lacking any other real options, Lister gave an embarrassed, goofy grin, and shrugged.

"Oh, yes, Lister," Rimmer said, in Ace's voice. "The one whose life is in danger." Either from this mission, or directly afterwards.

Rimmer's alternate gave a grin that Rimmer knew well. It had been one of his favorites, back when he was alive. It did not touch his eyes, and gave his face a distinct resemblance to a vulture. "Oh." The grin faded like it had been whipped off of his face by a strong wind. He spun the chair around and turned to face the viewscreen.

Rimmer cleared his throat. It was odd, addressing himself. Especially when he knew the loathing he would have for himself-as-Ace. Even more so when he considered it to be rather justified. "Er, my old kidney bean - where is everyone else?"

Yeah, thought Lister, where are they?

"Dead..." the alternate Rimmer said, in a flat voice, still facing the windscreen.

To Lister, the room suddenly dropped several degrees in temperature. Little things, details, things said and not said - all were preying on his mind. Tiny bells were chiming somewhere, and he shook his head involuntarily.

Rimmer frowned. He had a fair idea why this alternate Rimmer was acting so oddly. He had an eternal lifespan, after all; who knows how long he had been alone in deep space? Centuries? "How?"

The alternate Rimmer's voice was still vacant as he answered, "GELFs. Lister married one. Ran out. They wanted him back. He refused to go. So they boarded. Shot the other three. I hid." There was no shame or regret in his voice.

Yes. Definitely a bad feeling. There was an orchestra of chimes now.

Rimmer sighed, closing his eyes. Yes, that's exactly what he would have done, if Lister's in-laws had come for them. The sensible thing. He would have ended up just like this. Only, he thought, looking around, he would have kept the place a little cleaner.

Lister looked at the other Rimmer curiously. It wasn't that he didn't think any Arnold Rimmer anywhere could have done something like that. On the contrary, it seemed exactly like the sort of thing a Rimmer would do. But that was just it; the story was _too_ plausible; too believable - almost rehearsed.

"Bloody ship is dying, though," alternate-Rimmer continued, flatly. He stood, abruptly, and walked to the midsection, barging past Rimmer, and seated himself in one of the grotty chairs, facing the two intruders.

Lister's mental alarms were going off all over the place. He swallowed, watching the alternate Rimmer.

The alternate Rimmer gave that vulture grin again. "Come, sit, tell me what the smeg you gimps are doing here."

Rimmer sat, cautiously. He was going to get crud all over the flightsuit, and dry-cleaning bills on those were hell. He felt irritation at this alternate version of himself. What kind of a greeting for visitors was this? He flickered his eyes to Lister, who had not made a move to sit. Surely _he_ wouldn't feel that bad about soiling his jumpsuit.

Oh, there was no way Lister was getting any closer to that man. He edged around at a constant distance, ending up standing behind _his_ Rimmer; the one that didn't dress like a radioactive traffic cone. He put his hands on the back of Rimmer's chair.

Rimmer felt Lister's nervousness, and shook his head. He was not surprised that Lister did not trust this alternate; Rimmer wouldn't buy an apple from any alternate version of himself. He knew himself too well. But glaring and edging around only tipped people off. "We're here to rescue you, Arnie-boy."

The alternate Rimmer laughed, the noise shockingly loud in the enclosed space. The laughter stopped abruptly, like a tape had been cut off, and Lister jumped a little, jerking Rimmer's chair.

Rimmer looked at Lister, irritated. Lister was making _him_ jumpy, now, and he did not handle jumpy well.

They were in deep smeg now. Deep, down and dirty smeg. Lister tried to signal _danger_ when Rimmer turned to face him. They had to get away, pronto, but loath though he was to admit it, Rimmer had more experience in these situations than him. This needed to be his call to make. God, he was starting to feel like some silly sidekick. Ace Rimmer and Skipper - his faithful companion!

Seeing the expression on Lister's face, Rimmer wondered if all of this jumpiness was just indigestion. He turned back to the alternate version of himself. He was acting space-crazy. But that was easily handled; there were many voluntary organizations to handle just that in various dimensions, and he had delivered many half-mad shipwreck survivors, over-guilted mechanoids, and too-long-alone holograms to the various institutions. Never himself, before, but this man was certainly acting like a candidate.

The alternate Rimmer sneered at Rimmer's statement. "What did you rescue last time, a pint of lube from an all-night big-boy sex shop?" He glanced back and forth at the two of them, amused.

Rimmer shifted, frowning. That's what he had thought, too, when he first met Ace. Of course, now he actually _did_ want to get back to Starbug so that he could play Spot The Submarine with Lister. Well, that didn't make him gay, did it? Maybe he'd be better off just thinking about the tongue-lashing he would give Lister first. Tongue-lashing was perhaps not the right phrase to use in this context, however. He sighed. Damn Lister.

Anger had overtaken fear in Lister's mind as he regarded that disturbing, blank expression. "So yer saying you don't want rescuing?"

The alternate Rimmer's lip twisted "How in space do you expect to rescue me?"

Rimmer leaned forward. "We have a ship. We can.." he paused. He should probably not mention that he had every intention of dropping the man into a loony bin. "...drop you off... somewhere, old chum."

The alternate Rimmer popped out another tape-recorder laugh. Lister watched him cautiously.

"Oh, what a delightful idea," the alternate said, with false enthusiasm. "Drop me off somewhere. What, a GELF-moon? Perhaps a simulant ship? Right in the middle of a red-hot sun? I don't know if you've noticed, but the human race is _extinct_!" He spat out the last sentence.

Lister's grip on Rimmer's chair grew stronger, and Rimmer sighed. "We'll take you somewhere where it isn't, my old hunting vest. Another dimension."

His alternate snorted. "Tell me another one, you bacofoil git."

"Look, what do you think _we_ are; GELFs in fancy dress?" Lister interjected.

Rimmer's alternate looked at him, pointedly, up and down. "You do look it." Lister hoped Rimmer would channel just a little bit more of Ace and have the good sense to hold Lister back if he tried to do something stupid. As it was, he was fighting himself not to hit that smarmy git straight in the orange 'H'.

Rimmer sighed and stood. The last thing he needed was to listen to his alternate and Lister sniping with each other. Especially since it brought back rather tempting memories of when _he_ was free to be a bastard. "If you want to stay here, feel free to."

Lister kept gripping the back of the chair as Rimmer stood up. He glared at the alternate. It was completely irrational, but he felt a deep-seated anger that this despicable loser was wearing _his_ Arn's face. He had no right!

The alternate pondered for a moment, twisting his lips. He finally said, "Well, wait a bit."

Rimmer stood in the middle of the empty space next to the table, crossed his arms, and watched. With all this calmness, Lister relaxed a little, letting go of the chair slowly. He looked towards his Rimmer, suddenly unsure of how to gauge the situation. Alarm bells were still going off, but they had faded into the background now, and he was aware that _something_ might happen. Just not what.

The alternate leaned down and picked up a filthy box from the ground, putting it on the table. He started to rummage through it, muttering to himself.

Lister moved towards his Rimmer, who touched Lister's arm, pushing Lister behind him. He had to keep that bum out of the way of anything that happened, Rimmer groused internally. He would just muck things up. Thankfully, Lister did not argue with this, and moved behind Rimmer without resistance.

Rimmer's alternate pulled out psi-scan. He tried to use it, whacking it on the side a few times. It gave a desultory blip and died. "Smegging martian crap," he muttered, tossing it on the ground. He started to rummage through the box again.

What on Earth could he be looking for? Lister watched with a growing, horrible suspicion.

Rimmer had a feeling that this alternate knew he was not being forthcoming. And he knew that any version of him would have a very limited number of options in such a scenario. Since the man had not tried to flee or beg for mercy, Rimmer began to turn, very slowly, moving Lister towards the corridor that lead down to the DJ ship, pushing him backwards. Lister did not need to be asked twice, and started backing out of the room.

"Here somewhere..." the alternate muttered, absently, still rummaging through the box, tossing bits and bobs onto the floor behind him. He finally pulled out something black and knobby, and pointed it at Rimmer. Something blue emerged from it with an unassuming buzz, hitting Rimmer in the shoulder.

Terrific reflexes, Arn, Rimmer thought to himself as he staggered backwards, his shoulder half-gone. World-class reflexes. Bronze swimming certificate reflexes. It hurt like hell. "Run!" he yelled at Lister. Smegging hell, the bum had stepped in it this time. He hadn't bloody well listened to Rimmer, had he, and now look at where they were! "For smeg's sake, run!"

Rimmer's alternate tried to sight around Rimmer's staggering form to get a clear shot at Lister, an eerily familiar look of put-upon petulance on his face.


	3. Chapter 3

"No!" Lister yelled out in alarm. This wasn't happening. This wasn't smegging happening. Lister grabbed his Rimmer, staring at that not-there shoulder, where blue sparks cascaded prettily towards the ground, singeing the flight-suit. "You _fucking bastard_!" He tried to pull on Rimmer, wanting him the hell out of here; not thinking, just wanting him safe, whole, not dead.

The alternate Rimmer played with the weapon for a moment, then frowned, hitting it on the side. He pointed it at the pair again.

What the bloody smeg was Lister doing? Didn't he understand simple instructions? Well, obviously not. 'Wait in the cockpit,' had been a simple instruction, hadn't it? Rimmer pulled away, running to tackle his alternate. "I said run, you twonk," he spat. His running was hampered by the searing pain in his shoulder, to the point where it was more a lumber.

Lister froze, torn between actions. He had no weapons, and he wouldn't get back to the ship in time to see if there was anything there. Besides, he didn't trust that computer one bit. He couldn't just stand there and watch Arn get slowly shot to bits by this maniac, but if his hard-light drive was anything like his Rimmer's, Lister wouldn't be able to overpower him easily, either. He watched both men, helplessly.

Rimmer's alternate finally got the little black weapon working again, and removed a lot of one of Rimmer's legs with another blue bolt. Rimmer dropped like a vended Crunchy Bar, his consciousness taking a small holiday.

There was no time to hesitate anymore. There was no time to think. All that existed was action and feeling, as Lister charged at the alternate Rimmer, screaming. The alternate pointed the black thingy at Lister. Nothing happened. He sighed and whacked it again. Lister, crazed with anger, reached to knock it out of his hand. Rimmer's alternate looked on in annoyance as it flew out of his hand and landed in a corner. "Damn it, that was my only gun," he said, his voice peevish. "Stupid smegging Martian tech."

Lister grabbed him and tried to push him up against the wall, spitting as he yelled. "You _bastard_! You smegging, fucking _bastard_!" It was like trying to uproot the Eiffel Tower. There was no give at all. It felt nothing like Rimmer's human-feel hard-light drive. Lister kicked at him, tried to bite, tried to hit; tried anything that might hurt. He wanted to hurt him like he'd hurt Arn. He wanted to tear _his_ smegging limbs off and see how he liked it. He wanted to make him hurt like Lister was hurting. He cried in frustration as nothing he did had any effect.

Rimmer's alternate sighed as he watched Lister impotently try to kill him. "So sorry. Did I hurt your boyfriend?" He picked Lister up with one hand, tossing him across the filthy table. Lister looked up at the alternate with the most seething expression possible. How could he have thought he looked like Arn? There was nothing in that face reminding him of _his_ Rimmer.

The alternate Rimmer paid no attention. He walked over to where Rimmer lay on the floor, noting with interest the way his blood disappeared with a faint blue glow as it dribbled off of the raw edges of his blown-off shoulder and leg. He turned Rimmer over, raising an eyebrow as the wig fell off. He looked up at Lister, who had clambered down from the table and was trying to kick. "He's a hologram."

"Sod you, yes!" Lister looked down at Rimmer, worried sick through anger. Was Arn dead? He looked dead. He looked gone. Gone. Lister's mind couldn't process it.

Rimmer's alternate poked at the undamaged skin on Rimmer's face. Rimmer moaned quietly, his eyes still closed. "Not like me..."

"Leave him the _hell_ alone!"

The alternate Rimmer suddenly jumped to his feet and grabbed Lister by the throat, a wild look in his eyes. Lister spluttered. "Does he feel human?" the alternate spat. "Can he _feel_?"

"He _is_ human!" Lister yelled back, feeling tears in his eyes. "Damn you, he's human!" Why could no Rimmers ever see this?

The alternate Rimmer tossed Lister aside. Lister cried out as he hit the wall, annoyed at the pain which was keeping him from getting to Arn, from doing something.

The alternate Rimmer started to whack the table, hard, over and over. The box danced around on the table with the impacts, scattering its grotty contents to join in the frenzied dance of thud-thud. "Smeg it, that should have been _me_!!" he screamed, hitting the table again and again.

Lister lay against wall, trying to clear his head. He had to get to Arn. Had to do something. Had to get closer. Ignore the pain. Slowly, too slowly, he managed to drag himself across the floor, turning his head to see the edges of Arn's wounds slowly filling in and drawing together neatly, lines of neon-blue lightning playing across the now unbroken surface. Healing. Arn was healing! Lister cried out in relief, wanting to reach out and cover him with his body. He'd always known he'd need to protect Rimmer from himself, but never quite like this.

Some part of Rimmer heard the noise near his ear, and he raised his head. His eyes would not focus. His arm and leg were screaming agony at him. He dropped his head again, unable to think or move.

"I thought..." Lister panted, tears running down his face.

Rimmer's alternate's tantrum had ebbed, and he walked over, grabbing Lister by the scruff of his neck and hauling him to his feet. "Does he have a light bee?" he shrieked.

Lister gave him a hard look, and said nothing.

"Tell me, you stupid grotty curry-breathed cig-sucking wet ponce..." the alternate Rimmer continued, shaking.

As calmly as possible, considering the circumstances, Lister replied, "No, go on, really insult me." He was not afraid anymore.

The alternate was breathing heavily, his eyes wild, his mouth working. Slowly, some coherence came to his eyes. Lister met his gaze steadily. A slow, evil grin spread over the alternate's face. "I can try to cut it out and see if one's there."

"Right. And if I tell you he's got one, you won't?" After years of bunking with Rimmer, Lister had sarcasm _down_.

"You tell me, and you don't have to watch."

"If yer gonna do it anyway, why ask me?"

The alternate Rimmer's lip quivered. Madness returned to his eyes, but it seemed, somehow, to be a different flavor; more desperate. Lister tried to see how Rimmer was doing out the corner of his eye, but the alternate pulled him close, filling his vision with this face - which was Rimmer, and yet not. "I _need_ his light bee! You don't know what it's like. I can't _feel_ anything!" Lister was shocked to see that tears were starting to stream down the alternate's face. "I killed Lister... by accident... I didn't know how hard I could hit!" He tightened his grip on Lister's collar. He shifted out of sadness as quickly as he had gone into it. "Cat and Kryten tried to put me down. I put them smegging down." He sounded almost proud.

"You killed them all," Lister said, quietly. He had suspected this for some time, he realized.

"I killed Lister!" the alternate shrieked, the madness quickly flitting through grief to desperation. He shook Lister. "I need that smegging light bee. I need a real body. I need to feel. I feel fucking _dead_!"

There was no need for anger here. Had he thought this wasn't Arn? It was. The way his eyes had blazed when he'd said he'd killed Lister... Lister met the alternate's gaze through his dizzyness.

"I don't even know how to get my own bee _out_!" the alternate half-screamed, half-sobbed.

"You didn't mean to do it." It was not a question. It had been an accident. Lister knew how he would feel if he'd killed Arn by accident. It was bad enough thinking he might be dead by someone else's hand. By his own? He wouldn't be as calm and composed as the person now shaking him, that was for sure.

Rimmer's alternate shook him harder. "Of course I didn't smegging mean to do it, you stupid gay smegging bumtard!"

Lister was not handling the shaking well, but all that was left in him was pity. "I'm sorry." He tried to keep eye-contact, tried to keep the alternate occupied. Maybe Arn would recover fast enough to help him.

Rimmer's consciousness was returning in a rather wary fashion. It was not an enjoyable time to be conscious. He was not wholly repaired; large chunks were still missing from his shoulder and leg. But he was together enough for motion, and Lister was probably off somewhere doing something stupid... He staggered to his feet, grabbing his alternate around the throat with his intact elbow.

Seeing Arn up and about this soon gave Lister only a few seconds' worth of joy before giving way to dread and fear of what might happen to him. He could still very well die. The alternate Rimmer let go of Lister, who fell to the ground, landing on his arse.

Rimmer tried to pull the other Rimmer down, but had only moderate success at unbalancing the hologram at all. His hard-light drive was very hard indeed. The alternate sighed in exasperation, then stumbled backwards, making Rimmer the brakes between him and a wall. Rimmer shook with the impact, but seeing Lister sitting there, he did not let go. He couldn't look like a twit in front of Lister, some part of him said. He'd never live it down.

Lister yelled out in alarm, but at pretty much the same instant a thought occurred. The gun! He'd knocked the gun off into... somewhere. There were plenty of dark, grungy corners for it to have rolled into, but where?

Rimmer's alternate slammed Rimmer against the wall a few more times. Rimmer saw stars dancing in sexy constellations, and barely noticed that he let go, falling to a seated position. After a few seconds, his vision cleared enough for him to see his alternate, standing back slightly and sighing. "Can your ship only take you to the freak nancy costume party you came from?" he said, when he saw that Rimmer was looking up at him. Rimmer heard the sounds, but they did not resolve into words. His shoulder and leg were still burning, and the back of his head felt like the gent's toilet at an airport. When Rimmer did not answer, his alternate shrugged. "Well, better there than here." He stepped back and looked around, walking to a chair with an air of resignation and picking it up.

Lister finally found the weapon, off in a particularly nasty corner, where oil and something he did not want to think about were choked with dirt into a sort of noxious sludge. He swore under his breath, and tried to calculate if he could get to it before that psychotic maniac saw him.

Rimmer struggled to stand, but this scummy Starbug was tilting and whirling sickeningly around him, and he could not figure out which way was up. He tried to stagger to his feet, and found himself flopping to the side. He touched the wall and used it to orient himself back to a sitting position, then tried to push himself up with his arms, asking his legs very politely to please get underneath him.

Rimmer's alternate carried the chair over and hit Rimmer solidly on the head with it. Rimmer dropped back to a sitting position, his vision exploding in white sparks.

The alternate bent down, looking intently at Rimmer.

Fast-healing Arn might be, but that had to hurt. Lister tired to tell himself that Arn's brain was in his chest, not his head, but it didn't help. Seeing the not-his-Rimmer leaning down like that, a look of absolutely _nothing_ in his eyes, Lister made his decision, and ran.

Rimmer's alternate poked at Rimmer's cheek, trying to determine if he was unconscious. Rimmer moaned through reflex, his brain inoperative. The alternate Rimmer sighed and picked up the chair again, with the air of a hassled parent delivering well-merited discipline.

Lister pulled the gun out of the pile of whatnot, his hands shaking. Once he was holding it, two features resolved into what he hoped were a trigger and a muzzle. He turned to the psycho, who had raised his chair, presenting a back shot that would be harder to miss than the side of a barn. A back shot. He couldn't, could he? He was crazy, but he was a human being too; scared and lost and... trying to kill Arn. Dammit.

He took it. The bolt took a crater out of the alternate Rimmer's back that sputtered dusky orange sparks. The alternate dropped the chair, turning to Lister. Hardly realizing he was screaming, Lister fired again and again; after the third shot, it jammed, glowing reddish with heat, but Lister didn't notice for a while, clutching at the trigger hoping more shots would go out and _finish_ this. When his hands started protesting he swore and dropped it, trying not to think about what he'd just done.

Rimmer's alternate staggered for a few steps, the one fleshless hole in the back and two in front still spitting dull orange sparks. Lister ran over, pushing him away, and he fell, looking very, very surprised.

Lister bent over Rimmer. Blood was leaking from Rimmer's hair and trickling to the end of his rather impressive nose, where it disappeared in a blue glow as it dripped off the end. Lister did not know what to do with his hands, and ended up running them through his own hair. "Arn..." he said, helplessly. He was a chicken soup technician, too; he knew less about advanced holography than Rimmer did about astronavigation. He couldn't tell dead from alive.

Rimmer's consciousness was dancing in and out, like his head was a loo and it desperately needed to pee. He shook his head, slowly, inviting it back in. His head throbbed, and his shoulder and leg were still in agony. "Whu?" he asked, slurred.

All Lister could do was laugh, and breathe, finally. Arn would be all right, so _he_ was all right. Everything else was tangential.

"Whasho smegging funny?" Rimmer groaned, feeling miffed.

Sensing his irritation, Lister nonetheless found himself unable to resist caressing Rimmer's cheek. Just a light, loving touch, just to see that he really was still there. Something nagged at the back of Lister's mind, though, and he turned around. The other Rimmer as gone. A broken light bee lay on the floor, larger and cruder than Rimmer's. Lister watched it silently, his remorse slowly fading into dullness. Well. That Rimmer had wanted to get away. He'd wanted this to end. And now it had. He'd felt dead. Maybe he had been, and this was just a delayed reaction. Even so - Lister had killed him. And there was his heart, cut out for everyone to see. A life for a life. Was that really so much better than what he had tried to do to Arn? Arn, who also lived inside such a small, metal orb.

Rimmer saw the direction of Lister's look. He pushed himself to his feet, leaning his hands on his thighs while waiting for the angry messages from his injured leg to subside. He limped over to where the light bee lay. Him. Alternate-him.

Rimmer seemed fine already, Lister noted, marveling at his speed of recovery. He stood aside, still absurdly apprehensive about letting Rimmer get close even to the remnants of the person who had tried to kill him.

Rimmer picked the bee up, brusquely, and put it into the pocket that still existed. Half of the jacket was blasted to nothing. He noted that Lister was looking at the bee in his pocket with alarm. No, he thought; I am not going to just leave him here. He's me, Listy; I'm him. Bastards-in-arms. "I think that's what _I was_ supposed to deal with," he muttered.

Lister smiled warmly. "What, before or after he shot and killed you?" He could not make his voice angry or snarky. It was already filled with too much relief that Rimmer _did_ survive.

Oh, smiles and happiness and isn't it great that it all worked out so lovely? Rimmer took a deep breath and started to rant. "You could have died! I'm going to kill you!" He paused. That didn't really work. "Er." Nothing smegging worked around Lister. Caution and reason fell off of him like water off of a greasy poppadum. He would just keep grinning his way through the universe until something killed him. Rimmer turned and stomped lopsidedly down the corridor, wishing both of his legs were in a state for a really good stomp. He limped his way to the ship. Lister followed him, very light on his feet, feeling almost euphoric. They were alive. They were both alive!

"Get in, you meddling space-bum," Rimmer snarled, pointing at the DJ ship's open hatch.

Lister stopped Rimmer, and turned him around, looking into his eyes. He'd acted like a goit, and Rimmer's anger was probably not completely out of order. Still, if he hadn't come along, Rimmer might not have... well. He tried to construct an apology which took into account the fact that he wasn't actually sorry he came along. This proved rather a challenge. "I'm sorry I didn't stay behind. But I'm glad you're alive," he said finally, his eyes glistening.

Anger was a safe emotion, and a number of unsafe ones were swirling around in his head. Rimmer took the anger and embraced it as an ally. "You never will, though, will you. You'll always come along. I could have lost you, you..." Rimmer choked on the words that were coming flooding out. There were more, so many more. He could rant for hours if they would only line up in some sort of order, but they all wanted to pile out at once.

"And I could have lost you! If it was me, what would you do?"

"If I were you? I'd pick my partners better," Rimmer barked.

Lister smiled slightly. There was no one else. Odd how that had come to pass, that all of a sudden he just couldn't imagine being with anyone else.

"Look... get in. Please, once, just _once_ , smegging do what I ask!" Rimmer was yelling, hoping, maybe, that sheer volume would work where nothing else had.

He'd pushed Rimmer too far. Understandable. Lister gave him a steady look, tinted with love. He nodded and got in, clambering back to the cot. Right now he'd do anything Rimmer said, just to make him happy.

Rimmer followed, tight-lipped. Pointless, all of this ranting. Nothing got through to the man. Nothing.

The Computer was disappointed, but not completely surprised, by the return of not-Ace. Lister threw all her equations off. Well, nothing for it but to acquire more data on _him_ , and soldier on. "Ace - are you all right?" she asked, projecting caring and consideration. Relays snapped as he answered her in that not-Ace voice that she so hated. "Fine, computer." He closed the hatch and strapped in. She noted stress in every vital sign and every movement, but could not trace its source. "What was the issue, Ace?" she asked, feeling a simulated emotion that was rare for her - uncertainty.

Rimmer did not answer. He took the controls and lifted the ship out of Starbug very gently and smoothly. His anger was ebbing, and frustration and worry were taking its place. He held onto the anger, desperately, while he took the ship out to Jump range. He knew he would be of no use once it was gone.

Lister's brain felt overloaded, almost pleasantly drunk. He sat on the cot, just enjoying the fact that Rimmer was alive. That was more than enough, for now.

"Just take us back to our other dimension, old girl." The voice cracked and wavered.

Lister sniggered at that voice, which evoked the memory of the first time Rimmer had tried to imitate Ace, back on the _old_ Starbug. He guessed he wasn't the only one whose mind had gone kaput through exhaustion.

The Computer noted the change. Time was running short. "Yes, Ace," she said, in a voice like honey. "I'm so happy you're back, love."

"Transferring controls to you, Computer," Rimmer cracked; the transfer that would untie him from the ship annoyed him with its repetitiveness. He undid the straps that held him into the pilot's chair, and walked back to the cot, sitting next to Lister.

He's alive, thought Lister, following Rimmer with his eyes. He couldn't help staring lovingly at the man, like a teenager with a crush. He must think I look a right git, Lister thought.

Rimmer's mind was filled with static. He tried to tune into some halfway sane frequency, but nothing was coming in. He could not speak. He grabbed Lister, pulling him in tight, uncomfortably so, rocking him.

The embrace was unexpected, but so wanted, so needed. Lister laughed and choked, tearing up. "I thought you were going to die..."

Rimmer pulled back slightly and started kissing Lister desperately, his body shaking. Lister kissed him back, just as desperately, overwhelmed by this display of emotions which rarely even bobbed above the surface of Arn's tightly controlled facade. He drank it up, wanting to savor as much of it as he could before it went away again.

The kissing was bringing on horniness, and Rimmer found that terribly unwelcome. Just as abruptly, he stopped kissing, pulling Lister tight again. "Smeg, I can't do this." When he spoke, his voice was muffled by Lister's hair, but he could not pull away. Was this the only time he would ever feel like he had - any hold on Lister, at all? Any control? When he had the other man grasped too tightly to move? That posed certain practical difficulties.

"I love you," Lister choked into Rimmer's neck. "I just love you. I'm sorry I came after ya, but I couldn't not." He wouldn't understand, Lister knew, but he had to say so nonetheless.

"That's why I can't do this," Rimmer sighed. "I can't ask you to stay behind. I can't bring you with me. It'd kill me if you died because of some goddam Ace adventure. You don't want to be a smegging hologram. I don't want you to be one."

Rimmer pulled back, and Lister just looked at him. "I just... I just couldn't let him kill ya. Hurt ya."

Rimmer dropped his hands, looking down at them. A realization had hit him like a winch. Why he had delayed, why he had talked, why he had given his other self an opening, given him every opening to prove he wasn't utterly nutters. Pushed things to the point where Lister had been forced to kill him. "I thought I could pass it on. Smeg, I wanted to pass it on."

"But..." Lister gave a deep, shuddering sigh, "I don't want to hold you back from this." Oh, but he did, he did, so intensely! He wanted Rimmer back on Starbug, being his nasty old self, bickering with him, loving him, staying with him and not risking his life in some other sodding dimension! But it had to be Rimmer's choice, not his. He wasn't about to make that mistake again.

Rimmer drew himself to sit up straight, casting his mind back to the old Rimmer. Revision timetables. Up the ziggurat. The rational, uncaring man he used to be. "It's not an option, really. I can't stay away. I can't make you do this, either. Ergo, I have to pass it on. QED." He glanced at the silent Computer. He could not imagine that she did not have thoughts on this. Why was she so quiet?

"You can't stay away?" He couldn't read the damned man! He could never be certain. All he could do was love him, and hope something came through in return.

Rimmer looked back down at his hands. "From you," he muttered. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could feel the man he used to be flare his nostrils and snigger. Oh, yes, for love of _Lister_. Toenail-biter. Mold-grower. Bum extraordinaire.

"Arn..." Lister said, his heart bursting.

"Don't do that," Rimmer muttered at his hands. "I can't take that."

"Shit, ya think I can?" Lister laughed and cried, caught up in a confusing mix of emotions. He needed sleep, rest... something.

Rimmer frowned, still looking down. He shook himself out of his shredded half-jacket, which was just dangling stupidly. He looked at the pocket before dropping it. Yes, _me_ , a fine mess we get ourselves into, don't we? Every time? "He's me, you know. I... understood him."

Lister nodded. "Must have been hell."

Have been? Still is, you goit! Then Rimmer realized. He was talking about the drive. The smegging drive. "A lot like being soft-light. Maybe he never was." Soft-light made you hyper-aware of your body, or else you would walk through furniture or lean into it, instead of against it, or slowly sink into whatever you were sitting or lying on. You had to enhance your attention to sight to make up for the other lost senses. But that was just a form; you can always adapt to a form. Being Rimmer - that was a beyond-life sentence with no parole.

Lister looked at him. "Being soft-light was like that?" He hardly remembered their short-lived body exchange, although at the time he thought he'd never forget it. It hadn't seemed all _that_ bad.

"Well, you couldn't accidentally kill anyone," Rimmer replied, his mouth a hard line. "Couldn't do sod-all."

"Made of light..." He thought of Rimmer forming when they downloaded him, back after all that time in deep sleep when they were chasing Red Dwarf. The holoship, glittering in the darkness of space. Rimmer's high form, when he'd... Lister stopped thinking.

Rimmer snorted. "It sounds a lot more romantic than it is."

"What, like being Ace, then?" It sounded like a potential joke, but Lister only partly meant it to be one.

Rimmer frowned more deeply. "Like being Ace."

"Approaching Starbug," the Computer announced, her voice slightly clipped.

Rimmer ran his hands through his hair. Spare wigs, spare suits; he had them, but he had utterly no desire to put them on. He felt like a mannequin in a store window, just a form to hang Ace on. He was smegging tired of smegging Ace. "Smeg," he groused.

Lister wrapped his arms around Rimmer protectively. "Hey. It'll be OK."

"Y... es," Rimmer replied, with zero enthusiasm. He was in control of nothing. Not himself, not his alternate selves, not this enigmatic Computer, not this enigmatic man who had burrowed his way into Rimmer's heart, and then commenced to attach a leash to it and jerk it around like a paddle-toy.

Lister's smile slowly widened into a grin. "I won't _let_ it not be OK!"

"Lord knows, _I_ won't be able to stop you..." Rimmer muttered. A thought struck him. Maybe he could get out of one aspect of this craziness. "Maybe it's the middle of the night right now."

"I wouldn't mind going straight to bed," Lister deadpanned. He'd suddenly thought of the one thing he probably needed the most right now.

"I can sneak off to your room and tell everyone they dreamed it in the morning." Rimmer did not take Lister up on the innuendo.

Listed kissed his cheek. "We'll think of something." He was positive they would.

"Are we going to orbit all evening?" asked the Computer, sweetly, as if it were a completely reasonable plan of action.

"Think fast," Rimmer said to Lister.

"Well, what time _is_ it there?" Lister directed this question to no one in particular, but the Computer seemed to think he was addressing her. He was fine with that.

"Communicating with ship's computer," the Computer announced. "Half-past two in the morning."

"Even Kryters will be re-charging then," Lister said enthusiastically, turning to Rimmer. Wasn't going half-bad, this!

"Yippe." Rimmer sat in the pilot's chair, strapping in. Lister shook his head and chuckled. Rimmer did not even try to put on Ace's voice as he said, "Transferring to manual," and landed the ship. Something else had been added to his To Worry About list. The Computer had spoken to Lister. She never spoke to anyone other than him. Even when nubile young things had asked for the time, he had always had to repeat the question for the Computer himself. But she had spoken to Lister. Rimmer landed with an ungentle thump.

"Yeees - home safe!" Lister yipped.

Rimmer popped the hatch, not as thrilled. He unstrapped himself and started to clamber out. He stopped, halfway, closed his eyes, and put on the Ace voice. "'Night, Computer!" he said as he left. Lister followed, gingerly, and said, as an afterthought, "Yeah, night and tha'," meaning nothing but the very words he said. It might be a bit love-struck, but there was probably nothing seriously wrong with it. The Computer, silent after Rimmer's greeting, hummed gently at him. He shrugged and closed the hatch, then followed Rimmer out of the docking bay.

Rimmer trotted to Lister's room, nervously. He did not want to meet anyone and answer any questions, at all.

Nervousness was one of the things you _could_ easily read on Rimmer, if only because it so often manifested itself. For some reason, Lister felt oddly turned on by it; it was just so very Arn. Rimmer dashed inside the room, sighing the sigh of the relieved. Lister followed, looking Rimmer up and down. He wanted to consume the man; it was a desire fueled by something other than just physical attraction. He needed Arn. It was strange to finally understand what that meant.

Rimmer looked down to match Lister's eyeline, noting his shredded and charred uniform. He started to pick off the tatters of shirt that dangled on him, tossing them in the waste bin.

Lister gave an ingenuous smile. "Need some help with that?"

Lister's smile was, as ever, contagious, and Rimmer, despite his nerves and anger and annoyance, found his own mouth straightening and preparing to move upwards. But the light showed a darker print on Lister's dark neck, and his mouth dropped back down again. He started to yank at Lister's collar, looking at the skin underneath.

"What?"

"Did he... I... hurt you?" Rimmer asked, feeling the anger surging back in him.

"Wha.. No! I mean... Yes, but... I'm fine!" What on Earth did that have to do with anything?

Rimmer saw that the bruises were, indeed, quite superficial. He dropped his hands and stepped back, feeling the energy sap out of him along with the anger.

Lister took off his jacket and overall tops and opened his long johns, as if to illustrate. "See!" He wasn't really aware of the implications of what he was doing until he stood there, well on the way to being undressed, with Rimmer's eyes on him.

Rimmer looked at the neck and chest that were exposed by this. Horniness started to return, and it mixed with the anger and frustration still simmering in him to make a bilious stew. He walked back to the bunk and sat down on it, letting it all flow through him. "I need a better view," he said, quietly.

All right, Lister thought, shrugging his arms out of his long johns. A grin was now permanently etched onto his face, but all in all this made him feel rather silly. He was not used to being on display, or rather, being _aware_ of being on display. This was all so... deliberate. He was a man of impulses, not careful consideration and planning. And the way Rimmer was looking at him...

Rimmer stretched his legs out and crossed them. He steepled his forefingers, resting his chin on them, and noted Lister's nervousness. Lister? Nervous? This demanded investigation.

There was another aspect of this, and it haunted Lister's mind as he undid his belt. Rimmer had always made it pretty clear he didn't find Lister physically attractive, and while that was fine when all they'd wanted to do was drag each other through the mud and induce as much irritation as possible, it was a different story now. At least, Lister noted, with some satisfaction, Rimmer could not call him fat. With the belt gone, his long johns and overalls sagged a little. He had not been eating well these last few months; if anything, he was a little too much on the skinny side for his type.

Rimmer frowned slightly. He had not truly looked at Lister since his return. The bum was _skinny_. Nervous, clean, and skinny? Was the universe about to end? "You need to eat less sloppily. It looks like you've been missing your mouth."

There was a strange note in Rimmer's voice, but by now, anticipation had pushed any hesitance firmly away, and was urging lust to come back into the driver's seat. Lister pulled the bottoms of both garments down at the same time, exposing muscle tone him that wasn't there back when he used to bunk with Rimmer. His boxers bravely tried to keep from bursting as he stepped out of his boots and garments in two practiced steps. He rarely wasted time getting out of his clothes, whenever he had to.

Rimmer raised his eyebrows at that. He leaned forward, trying to conceal the beginnings of an erection that his ripped and burnt trousers were in no state to cover.

Lister took a few steps forward, resting his hands on his hips. Maybe I'm not too shabby, at that, he thought. "Better?"

Rimmer grabbed Lister by the waistband, pulling him gently, wondering if he would come, go, or disappear entirely. He could not predict, anymore. He felt stupidly thrilled when Lister moved towards him. "Better."

Lister moaned and shivered as the breath from that word hit where it counted. Oh god, yes; touch, closeness! Hands, back on him; he might need to get them permanently attached to his body, because any moment with them not there was going to be nothing but agony.

Rimmer was amazed that the man was still _there_. Words were nothing; no protestation Lister could give could match the finality of him simply _being_ there. Rimmer nuzzled his boxers gently, running his hands all over Lister's legs, feeling the muscle and skin.

Lister leaned against the bunk on the top, and Rimmer's touch on the bottom, useless for anything but absorbing sensory impressions.

Their prior sex acts had been frantic, hurried, a desperate need to _grasp_ Lister, lie atop him, hold him down. Rimmer made himself slow, not grab and hold and try to overwhelm. He had eaten too quickly before; he would savor this meal. If it disappeared at the stroke of some interdimensional midnight, or turned into a pumpkin, so be it. He felt Lister with his hands, up and down his legs, taking deep breaths so that he could blow them into Lister's boxers. He made himself smell the musk of sweat and crotch and cigarette; it was not a smell he would tolerate in any other context, but here, it was right.

Those hands... on him... Lister sighed. He made noises he didn't even understand himself.

Rimmer kicked off his boots, reached up, and pulled gently on the small of Lister's back, still nuzzling.

Lister's knees were weak. He was off in some other place where gorgeous people were doing amazing things to his groin. Wait - that was here.

Rimmer swung his legs so that he was lying face-up on the bunk, still pulling Lister, feeling incredibly awkward. Fortunately, Lister followed his pull. Rimmer tried to make this end up with Lister on top of him, and miraculously, it did. Lister came to rest on top of Rimmer, kissing him ferociously.

So much for savoring. The ferocity brought out something very basic in him, and he moved from slow to frantic, kissing, feeling, rubbing his erection against Lister's thigh. He grabbed Lister's buttocks, pulling him in hard.

Lister cried out as he ran his hands from Rimmer's shoulders to his sides and back up again, pressing up against Rimmer, thrusting against him; wanting, more than anything to just get _closer_.

Rimmer found himself already approaching orgasm as he rubbed and kissed. He paused to mutter in Lister's ear, "Hell... can never do this slowly... just.. often."

Now there was an idea. A wicked grin came to Lister's face. "Slow, eh?" He started licking Rimmer's lips very, very slowly. "I can do slow..." He could, at that. Slow, fast, double speed, on his head; anything. Anything.

"Thashnotnice," Rimmer tried to say around Lister's tongue, rubbing the other man's back firmly.

"Really?" Lister asked, licking Rimmer's chin, taking his time doing so. It took quite some time for him to move down to the neck, which, at first, he just breathed on carefully. Then, with the greatest care, Lister began to lick it all the way up and down with slow, deliberate lashes of his tongue.

It was firmer than a tickle, and twice as bad. Rimmer moaned, a drawn-out moan, with a whimper at the end.

"After all..." Lister mumbled, between licks, "I've been bad today. Have to make up for it... somehow."

They agreed on something. "Yes. Yes. Yes, you have. Yes." What were they talking about? Rimmer ground against Lister, who responded by going even slower.

After a while - which, to Rimmer, seemed very long indeed - Lister reached Rimmer's chest, his hands resting somewhere just above Rimmer's buttocks. He knew exactly where they were, and he could feel Rimmer twisting, consciously or unconsciously trying to force them further down, but Lister pressed them hard against Rimmer's lower back and sides, refusing to move.

Rimmer stroked Lister's hair, trying to remember exactly why he was upset with the man. It was important. Very important.

Lister licked across Rimmer's chest, moving down towards his stomach, his speed somewhat increased now. He paused abruptly as something got caught in his teeth; it was one of the tattered remains of the flight-suit. He laughed hoarsely as he threw it away.

Rimmer noted the gold shred fluttering away. "Oops."

The sound went straight through Lister's ear and out the other side, because he had just realized he was now hovering near Rimmer's erection. Oh, the possibilities. He rose up just a little, looking down, licking his lips, enjoying the anticipation. Rimmer watched, bracing himself as Lister moved down just a little, and licked the tip of the head, very quickly.

Rimmer sighed and leaned his head back, frustrated, as Lister did so again. And again. And again. He stayed a little longer each time, licking a little more elaborately. Finally, he grabbed the base of the penis with one hand, and grabbed Rimmer's buttock with the other. Wetting his lips, he placed both of them on the top of the head, and started moving up and down.

"Dave," Rimmer said, stroking his hair.

Lister licked around the base of the head, coming up for air for a moment. "I'm sorry," he said, ducking down again, then came back up for, "I scared ya back there." He couldn't stay away for long, going straight back down there the moment the words left his mouth. He didn't want words in there; they took up precious room.

"If this is your form of apology," Rimmer wheezed, "I'm in a difficult spot." Lister certainly had reason enough to apologize, reasons Rimmer did not care to see replicated. But this form of apology was almost worth it.

Lister removed his hand from the base of the erection, swallowing it whole, relishing the feel of Rimmer's cock inside his mouth, trembling, stiff - a part of the man he loved. "Smeg!" Rimmer barked, grasping Lister's hair, hard. Lister moved all of the way up, licking the head again. Rimmer shivered as he tried not to thrust back in; he knew the dangers of thrusting when the fellater was not expecting it, in the form of a brunette from Falathan with rather solid teeth. That was not a mistake that you made twice.

But Lister _wanted_ Rimmer to thrust. He swallowed the erection again, pulling on Rimmer's buttocks, forcing his member further into his mouth, licking it as it moved inside.

Rimmer did so, and as he expected, came with a strangled gasp.

Lister did not choke now, as the rapid climax was expected. Instead, he gave Rimmer's penis a few experimental licks, as the other man's gasps and pants brought him through the final spasms. Tuning into them, feeling almost like they were his own, Lister kept licking, his own erection forgotten.

"Listy," Rimmer sighed, as he became erect again.

Delirious, Lister grinned more widely than ever. "God, I love that."

"You have a way of making me feel like one of those malfunctioning vending machines that gives two bags of crisps when you've only paid for one," Rimmer groused.

"I love those," Lister mumbled through his licks.

"Not carnally, I hope!" Rimmer rubbed Lister's face, ears, hair, neck, all gently.

"I could," Lister licked slowly around the base of the head, "do this," up and across it, tasting the remnants of come, "all night."

"I think you could," Rimmer replied, faintly.

The rather intrusive pain Lister's groin belied his words. He tried to pretend it wasn't there, but his body did not work that way. He ground against Rimmer's leg, trying to go slowly, but his penis had a mind of its own, and damn well wanted to have its say.

Rimmer felt the grinding, and wrapped the non-humped leg around Lister, stroking his back up and down with it.

Lister cried out from the combination of lust, stimulation, and sensory input. His licks grew erratic. He felt like he was losing control.

Rimmer pulled gently on the head of Lister's that, he assumed, was not doing the thinking at this point. The one with the braids. Lister gasped, following the pull, and Rimmer kissed him deeply when he was in range, wrapping one hand around Lister's penis, the other around the back of his neck.

The kiss that was returned to Rimmer was laden with surprising tenderness. Lister gasped into Rimmer's mouth as his penis was touched, finally. "Oh... Yes..."

Rimmer stroked him firmly but gently, pushing the foreskin back, running his index finger through the precome to lube it as he stroked the head. He palmed it firmly as he did so, running his thumb up and down the underside of the shaft.

"Hands like... angels..." Lister rambled, incoherent.

"You are so sappy sometimes..." Rimmer grumbled into Lister's mouth, licking his lips.

Lister panted heavily, thrusting into Rimmer's hand. "Tr...th..."

Rimmer stroked him more firmly, more rapidly, opening his mouth wider to kiss him more deeply. He ran his hand from the back of Lister's neck down to the small of his back and back up again, stroking to match the strokes on Lister's penis.

Lister was overcome, and teetered on the brink of climax for a moment before plunging over, choking on "Arn.." as he came.

Rimmer felt orgasm shudder through Lister, and was overcome with possessiveness, "My Dave," he mumbled into Lister's mouth.

"Yes..."

Rimmer pulled at his back tightly, still stroking his cock. " _My_ Dave..." he croaked. His Dave. His smegging Dave. Nobody else's. _Nobody's_.

"Yes..." Lister repeated, quietly, tearing up.

Rimmer kissed him deeply, hard.

"Don't die," Lister whispered, in a voice that was at once pleading and forlorn. "Not for a long, long time."

"Er... I'll try not to do it again," Rimmer mumbled, startled by this turn of conversation.

"Please."

Him? He wasn't the one to worry about! "Don't do it the first time. It's no fun."

"Holiday. Germans." Lister mumbled.

"A whole pack of German tourists. I kid you not," Rimmer replied, thinking about dying. "The sunburt kind."

"Try not to," Lister said, pressing against him.

"Good." Rimmer closed his eyes, letting his own erection subside, holding Lister with one hand on the small of his back and one on his buttock.

Through the post-coital fog, something clicked. He wasn't being himself at all, Lister's conscience chided him. This was a job left unfinished. "If... need me... I'm... you can... whatever," he mumbled.

Rimmer patted him somewhat awkwardly. What was he going to do? Snore Rimmer to orgasm? "Go to sleep."

"Sleep... Good."

"Yes."

But Lister couldn't sleep. Not yet. Rimmer felt the tension, and started to stroke his back, feeling somewhat awkward. Lister tried to gain control of his voice, struggling, for a number of reasons, to get out what was preying on his mind. "I know yuh must've... lots of girls."

Oh, was this bothering Lister? Like Lister hadn't had his own share of women. "Do you want to compare notes?" he asked, sharply.

Lister shook his head drunkenly. "Just... hope... enough for you. J's me."

Rimmer sighed. What a concept. "Lister, you are far too much for any one halfway sane hologram."

Lister finally relaxed at this. "Gfhnfg..." he half-snored.

Rimmer let his hands rest. He had learned to go to sleep with Lister snoring in a bunk above like a pack of very sick hippos. He wondered if he could learn to sleep with that same sound right next to his ear. He gave it a try.

Lister snuggled closer in his sleep.

 

The Computer activated her connection to Starbug's security cameras, and watched Kryten unplug himself from his recharge socket. She did not like the idea of putting something so necessary in the hands of the sanitation droid, but at the moment, he was mobile and she was not. In any case, it was a can't-lose proposition for her. If he succeeded, well and good. If he did not, she had an alternate plan.

"Kryten..." she said, softly.

Kryten looked around, startled, pausing in his re-wrapping of the recharge cable. He finally turned to face the speaker. "Yes, Miss Computer, ma'am?"

"I need your help, Kryten. My plan did not work as I hoped. The alternate Arnold Rimmer did not wish to become Ace. I can find another - there are an infinite number, after all - but I fear that this one might become too attached before I can take him out to recruit another replacement."

Kryten's eyes widened in shock as the implications filtered through his processors. "He'll take Mister Lister with him! I'll be all alone again!" He was almost sobbing. He started to re-wrap the recharge cable, matching fold-lengths exactly.

"It doesn't need to be that way, Kryten. But that's why I need your help," the Computer replied, balancing urgency and reassurance in her tone. "Just make Ace... uncomfortable with Lister. Make him more eager to leave. If Ace does not become attached, and I take him to recruit his successor, both of our purposes are served."

"Of course. A superlative idea, ma'am," replied Kryten, tying the recharge cable into an immaculate double bow. "I'll think of something..."

"I have an idea or two already, Kryten," purred the Computer. "Let me know what you think..."

 

For some reason Kristine did want to think about all that much - living with this gang had made her rather prone to migraine headaches - this Starbug was much larger than the one in the Red Dwarf in her dimension had been. Halfway down the ridiculously long corridor she was in, she paused for a moment, reviewing that sentence. She sighed. Even her mental grammar was slipping. She'd been here too long.

Increased size or not, the ship was not exactly swarming with resources. The main difference between this and the standard model was the cargo holds; they were enormous on this Starbug, which would have come in handy if they'd only had something to store in there. Beyond that, there was a decently equipped medi-bay, a very basic personnel quarter section - very _very_ basic, if anyone would care to ask her, which they wouldn't, because the designers were all dead anyway - a small AR suite, the cockpit, a kitchen area, some sort of pathetic lounge-type arrangement in the mid-section, and tons and tons of these _bloody_ corridors! Frankly, she had no idea where to begin looking for what she needed to find.

Something had clicked in her mind the moment she'd seen the ceiling. No one _whitewashes_ spaceship ceilings, she'd thought, so why did the idea seem so oddly familiar to her? Finally, she'd remembered; some article she'd read in cyber-school about early model CRAP prototypes. Some of the models, particularly the ones intended for domestic use, it had stated, could suffer from a very specialized form of computer senility dubbed "droid rage". She remembered she'd thought the name to be rather misleading, as it was clearly more of a mania than a rage. Certain CRAP brains would, under stress, develop attachments to specific members of the laboratory staff. This infatuation eventually gave way to jealousy, and finally homicidal mania at any attempt to separate them from their object of affection. Because violent and harmful behavior towards humans went directly against their programming, the CRAP-brains would try to compensate by over-focusing on their primary task. Auto-chefs would produce seven-course meals for _every_ meal, five or six times a day; mining-bots would run white-hot drilling themselves into disrepair; and sanitation mechanoids... would whitewash ceilings.

The article had been somewhat unclear on details, partly because it had suffered through the merciless censorship of her school computer - it was a cyber-school, after all. It did not do to suggest to the students that they might wake up one morning tied to their bed by their virtual geography professor. Nevertheless, it couldn't be a coincidence. She had to know. Had to be certain.

The corridor finally ended in a small-ish closet type space, where several empty crates of a nondescript nature had been stashed by someone - who, she had no idea. But back on _her_ Starbug, it had been around this area that Kryten had kept his spare parts, in a disused locker. If she could find it, with any luck his manual would be in there. She scanned the doors on either side, looking for clues. There were precious few, and she sighed, at precisely the same moment that an insistent scent of pine hit her square in the nose. She did not have time to turn around before the syringe-gun shot into her neck, and the blasted corridor blurred into obscurity. She never thought she'd be upset to see it go.

 

The gun was hot in his hands, but Lister kept holding it, kept firing, and it didn't jam, it didn't stop. He kept firing into that Day-glo orange back, into the Rimmer who wasn't his, kept firing, orange sparks flying, until there was nothing left except a charred, sparking mess, which somehow kept on _moving_.

And he ran, because _Arn_ was there, on the ground, behind that reddish-yellow monster, who was also Arn, but not his - there had to be a difference. And then he was looking into Arn's face, but it wasn't there; there was only blood and broken bones, and light blue embers, dying. They were dying because Arn was dead, he knew. Arn was dead, and soon he would be just a small, sad, cold, metal ball on the floor, for someone to pick up and put in their pocket.

Lister tried to put the light-bee in his pocket, but he didn't know which one was Arn. Because Arn was dead, he was lying there on the floor, and in his pocket, at the same time; cold, dead - orange and blue sparks mixing, and suddenly there was a face in front of him, eyes too brown, face too sad, telling him Arn was going to die and he could watch, he could watch!

And then there was the knife, cutting into Arn's flesh that wasn't flesh, but blood was coming out; blood, and he was human, sod you, he was human, and he was dying, and Lister had killed, oh God, he had killed, and the walls were closing in; someone had shut the light off, and he was lying somewhere that was...

...Warm. Warm and safe, smelling of ghastly after-shave.

Lister blinked at the metal mesh of the bunk above him, just feeling Rimmer's arm around him, allowing normality and real life to resolve around him. He breathed. This seemed to help, too.

The red glow of the alarm-clock blinked 04:00 in a slow, heart-beat like pulse which was supposed to be soothing, but was, in actual fact, intensely annoying, and couldn't be turned off. Far too early, but the images still imprinted on the back of his eyelids did not invite going to sleep again just yet. Part of him wanted to wake Rimmer, but then again, the idea of waking Rimmer in order to get emotional support was probably not a good one. The man had plenty of emotions, just not a lot of support. Not enough for himself, let alone anyone else.

As bodies tended to do, Lister's had decided to take stock of its wants and needs, seeing as how it was clearly going to be awake for a while. It was not a long list, but it was there, and chief among the items on it was thirst. The kind of deep-seated thirst that comes from having drunk only alcohol all day, which, Lister realized, he had done. Years of this kind of behavior had made him more or less immune to dehydration headaches, but the thirst was nonetheless of the kind that should not be ignored. Experience from those same years had taught him that.

Sneaking out of bed with Rimmer holding him like that, seeming comfortable for once, was dissatisfying, to say the least, but he couldn't ignore his body. That, he realized, sighing, as he slithered beneath Rimmer's arm and tried to leap across the rest of his body without actually touching him, was more or less the story of his life. Impulse was followed by action. Simple as breathing.

The corridor felt cold and empty, and Lister realized he'd never been out there this late. Or rather, he hadn't been out here this late all alone and sober. Not both at the same time. It was not a comfortable feeling, and he found himself skulking forward, casting cautious glances from side to side. It was silly; what could happen?

Chuckling slightly to himself, he took the right turn necessary to reach the mid-section, and never noticed the hand reaching out to grab him from behind until the cold metal of a syringe-gun muzzle pressed against his neck. There was an odd sort of smell he almost remembered before consciousness gave up completely. 


	4. Chapter 4

Something was wrong with the cockpit, Rimmer thought blearily. It had never smelled like pine air freshener before. With an overtone of cigarettes. And at least one good fart. He frowned slightly, his eyes still closed. The cot felt wrong, too. Stiffer. Scratchier. He opened his eyes, and experienced acute disorientation. The cockpit was gone... he snapped awake. He was on Starbug, in Lister's bunk. Lister was not. Rimmer squinted at the clock on the nightstand, noting with surprise that it was six a.m. The sources of surprise were, in order of arrival, that he had slept so late, and that Lister had not. Rimmer rarely slept for more than a half-hour or so at a time. The injuries and repair, he decided. That was why he had overslept. Yes. That matter safely tucked out of the way, he moved to the next one. He doubted that Lister ever saw six a.m. from the rising side, only from the partying-too-late side. The bunk bore unmistakable visual and olfactory traces of his sleeping patterns, so he must have slept there for at least part of the night...

It did not matter. Maybe he had just gotten up to piss, and had been distracted by a lager. Or a dirty magazine. It was past time for Rimmer to be up, anyway. He stood and started to walk out of the door, realizing as cool air hit him that he was buck-naked. All of his clothes were back on the ship. Rimmer walked to the mirror, stared at himself, and started to concentrate. It had been a long time since he had made holo-clothes.

Almost exactly an hour later, Rimmer gave it up. He had done a reasonable job, he thought, re-creating his old uniform. He could not be sure of the back, despite his twisting to try to get a view in the mirror. He could not make the H at all; this must be controlled by that remote the old Ace had passed along, the one that would be sitting in the third crate from the left back on the DJ ship. Rimmer dithered for a moment between heading down there to pick it up, or heading up to the midsection to find Lister. The latter, he decided; he needed someone to check the uniform. For all that he could see in the dinky square mirror situated too high on the wall, he might have a pink patch on his arse.

Rimmer walked out into the corridor. It was empty, and almost eerily quiet. Didn't Starbug use to bang and hum as it staggered its drunken way across the stars? Well, perhaps this one was better-maintained than the old one. It could hardly be worse. He walked towards the midsection, spine straight, shoulders back - and nostrils flared as he took in a sickly smell of pine. Why was that _everywhere_? Including in the spotless midsection. Singularly lacking in anything Lister-like.

Rimmer jumped slightly as Kryten's voice sounded directly behind him. If the mechanoid breathed, he would have been breathing down his neck. What the smeg is wrong with me, Rimmer wondered. You'd think he hadn't spent twenty years Ace-ing around, _not_ getting snuck up upon... "Ah, you're up early, Mister..." the mechanoid's voice wavered from its confident start, landing somewhere in the middle of confused horror, "Rimmer... Sir??"

Rimmer spun around to face the mechanoid. He felt a massive surge of relief at the fact that he _did not have to be nice to the smegger_. "Yes, Kryten, some of us do not slob about until the evening is half gone." He straightened his holo-uniform, pointlessly. Kryten's eyes were wide; his square not-lips quivered grotesquely.

"But... But..." Kryten looked very hard at the blue uniform, then at Rimmer's forehead, his mouth opening and shutting in a fair imitation of a guppy.

"And... and," Rimmer replied, archly. "What?" When no response was forthcoming, Rimmer barged ahead. "Look, I'm looking for Lister. You know, the short, dirty, flatulent one. Have you seen him?"

"You... Your... You..." the mechanoid sputtered. This changed everything. Didn't it? What was he going to do? He was fairly certain that Mister Rimmer putting on his old uniform was _not_ a sign that he'd be jumping back into the ship and leaving any time soon. No, it hinted more along the lines of him moving in with Lister permanently, the two of them setting up house and being utterly, utterly happy, with no need or use for any sanitation mechanoids... His danger sensors crept into overload range.

Rimmer sighed. He pointed to himself, exaggeratedly. "Me. Yes. Me. Looking," he held one hand up to shade his eyes, "for Lister." He slouched and mimed holding a beer can.

Kryten gestured lamely with the feather-duster in his hand. "I was dusting, you see. That's why I'm here. Erm. Not for any other reason." That was probably unnecessary, he thought, as the question finally caught up with him. "Ah. Yes. Well."

Rimmer's eyes narrowed. "Have you got droid-rot?"

"Erm... Mister..." Kryten paused, questioningly, then plunged ahead, "Rimmer, sir..." he waited, to see if the name evoked any kind of reaction at all.

"Yes?" Rimmer asked, folding his arms and trying to affect a superior air. It did not take much effort. He had met hamster-GELFs who had every reason to feel superior to that mechanoid.

Kryten gave up. He would just have to go ahead, and hope what the Computer had planned would work anyway. He tried crossing his fingers behind his back, but they just hadn't been designed for the action. "Right. Well, this is rather awkward." He gave a mandatory-physical type of cough.

"Coming from you, everything is awkward," Rimmer grated, looking around. Where the smeg was everyone? Lister, bloody Cat, bloody Kochanski?

"Erm... Yes. Well... you see..." Kryten looked nervously towards the corridor. This had to work. Everything depended on it! "I was going to tell you, honestly, I was. But Mister Lister did say..."

Rimmer sighed. "Kryten, make like a debutante on her first blow job, and just spit it out."

Kryten's voice shot up in pitch as he erupted into an emotional outburst. "Oh, sir, he made me _promise_!" The despair came naturally. Confused, wild desperation was his default state at the moment. It had been for... well, no matter.

"And I will make you jump around like a Slavic dancer by attaching high voltage lines to your trademark. What _is_ it, Kryten?"

Kryten sighed, lowering his head. "Very well. I suppose..." He trailed off as he looked back up at Rimmer. "Yes. Come along." He shuffled out of the midsection and down the corridor.

Rimmer followed, at some distance, his eyebrows drawing forward, his forehead doing a fair imitation of the Nile Delta. Kryten was walking strangely. Even more strangely than he usually did. Shuffle? The mechanoid pranced, high-kneed, trotted, but he never _shuffled_.

Kryten looked over his shoulder several times, as if to make sure Rimmer was still there; Rimmer hovered at a constant distance, like a neurotic vulture who is watching a mortally wounded impala play Parcheesi.

The Nile Delta deepened as it became obvious that they were heading towards what would have been Rimmer's old quarters on the old 'Bug. Kochanski's quarters on this one. The mechanoid was moving more slowly, and Rimmer folded his arms in front of him. As they drew abreast to the door, Kryten turned to Rimmer. "I'm sorry, sir... I don't like doing this, but you _did_ insist..."

Rimmer had settled on one highly likely scenario. "Kryten, get to the point before I rip your ears off and use them as skeet."

Kryten sighed again. "Fine. Just..." He sighed again, lowering his own voice. "Keep your voice down." He pressed the Door Open button while Rimmer bit his lip, his arms still folded. The door slid open - oddly quietly, and Rimmer's mind worried at that; had the mechanoid been oiling the doors, too, or was this Starbug really in so much better condition than the old one, or perhaps had the laws of physics changed slightly? It was a welcome way to keep the rational part of his mind busy while the rest of him absorbed the sight that he had, after Kryten's hemming and hawing, half-expected to see, anyway; Lister and Kochanski in her bunk, naked, asleep in one another's arms. Lister stirred slightly as Rimmer watched, his face relaxed in that slack-jawed repose that Rimmer had come to know all too well from their time bunking together, and had come to know at even closer quarters last night, but it looked like that was common knowledge, on this ship? Some part of him told the rest of him that his lower lip was bitten half-through, but the rest of him was otherwise occupied.

Rimmer looked to Kryten as the door slid closed. The mechanoid was looking at him, something or other hiding away in his artificial eyes. "I thought she had better taste," Rimmer muttered. High time he cultivated a bit of that, too. He watched badly simulated emotions skate around on the slick jelly-rubber of Kryten's angular face; disgust finally got a toehold and sank in. "Yes, well, there you are, sir," the mechanoid said, sounding almost dignified.

"Thanks, Kryten." Rimmer spun on his toe, and started to walk towards the landing bay. He did not feel _bad_ , as such. Disappointed, perhaps. In an almost parental way. Yes. Vindicated. Yes. He remembered his words to Spanners - he'll change his mind, eventually. He always does. Lister had almost made it to 'next week,' too. Well, he couldn't really blame the man for being who he was. For constantly denying who he was - well, yes, Rimmer could blame him for that. But he still was not angry with Lister. No, just - numb.

Kryten's hopeful voice intruded on his reverie. "So I suppose you'll be leaving us, then?" He was trotting behind Rimmer at a stumbling lope. "I mean... All things considered..."

"Well, Kochanski does not seem to want to get back to her own dimension..."

"No, indeed!"

Was there some kind of madness going around that made everyone want to sleep with the last man alive? He was smeggy, uncouth, and... adjectives for Lister bubbled up that were not compatible with his mood. He still had it. Some kind of holo-virus, maybe; one that affected humans, too, so he had passed it to Kochanski. Or caught it from Kochanski, come to think. "It must be contagious."

"What is, sir?" Kryten asked, trying to gauge the hologram's reaction. Very little was forthcoming from Mister Rimmer's blank face, however.

"Nothing."

Some odd sounds, muffled banging, rumbled through the corridor. They would not have been audible if the ship had not been so quiet. Rimmer thought of the pipes in his old room, how they would skrueek and katong when he was trying to sleep and Lister took yet another shower. For such a fitly bum, he sure had taken a lot of showers. Kryten stiffened at the sound - most likely, Rimmer thought, thinking of cleaning the soap-scum up afterwards. Yes, they would want to... afterwards... "Someone must be taking a shower," Rimmer muttered, sharply.

"Yes, you know how..." the mechanoid paused, then restarted the sentence. "Everyone loves their showers around here!" Rimmer spun around, catching a broad grin on Kryten's face.

"Are you following me just for the arse view, or do you have nothing better to do?" He had a conversation scheduled, and that automated toilet-brush was not invited.

Kryten gestured to the duster that he was still holding. "Oh, no indeed! Keeping busy!" He started dusting the spotless pipes on the wall. It was a pretext, of course, but it _had_ been quite a while since he'd given them a good polish; maybe as long as half a day! He shuddered, dusting harder.

Rimmer waited for Kryten to turn and leave, but he continued to pretend to clean, in a ruse to stay close that was as transparent as American beer. "Why don't you get to it? I'm sure there's plenty of cleaning that needs doing." Especially now. Rimmer turned and started to walk towards the landing bay again. For some reason, his mind insisted on taking this opportunity to rehash his three sexual contacts with Lister in vivid detail, focusing on the awkward moments. Bumped noses. Hair caught in teeth. Heads banging against walls.

"Clean. Yes. Clean." The word triggered a deeply ingrained reaction in Kryten's mind. It was very, very important that he cleaned. Especially now, for reasons that were not entirely clear to him. "I have to keep it clean, otherwise, what might happen? I have to keep it clean, don't I?" He looked around, wildly "That's why I exist, isn't it? To keep things clean? I have to keep things clean, otherwise I don't exist, and if I don't exist, how can I clean?" Mister Rimmer's head loomed before him. It occurred to him, suddenly, that it seemed somewhat dusty.

If Rimmer had not been occupied with brooding, he might have noticed the madness in Kryten's voice. But he was, and he did not - not until Kryten advanced, duster raised, on Rimmer, and started to dust his head with intense concentration. "What the smeg is wrong with you?" Rimmer barked, dancing back.

Kryten blinked. What in Manet's name was he doing? "I'm sorry, sir! I don't know what came over me." Rimmer peered closely at Kryten as he turned back to the pipes. But the humming mechanoid appeared to be his calm and normal self. Insofar as his self was ever normal. Rimmer pushed Kryten aside, mentally, and started to chew on regurgitated interactions with Lister, like some embarrassing cud, as he hurried down to the landing bay. He was too wrapped up in his ruminations to notice that Kryten had hurried after him.

Rimmer popped the hatch and climbed into the ship. The Computer noted his entry, and noted his dress. Thanks to her link to Starbug's surveillance cameras, she also noted that Kryten was cleaning rivets nearby, looking on with interest. She watched this not-Ace, looking almost nothing like the space hero that he should have been, sit in the pilot's seat and sigh.

"Computer..." Rimmer asked, putting on Ace's voice. It must look absurd, now that he was out of the flightsuit and wig. God, he was desperate, wasn't he? Asking his smegging Computer for relationship advice? Well, it was about three million years too late to get an answer from Ask Jenny.

"Yes, Ace?" the Computer asked, sweetly, noting that Kryten was moving closer.

"You know that short, smelly one that has been traveling with me?" Rimmer asked.

"Yes, Ace." The mechanoid was cocking his head, the Computer noted.

"Have you had a chance to run your... algorithms... on him?"

"I have had no reason to." The Computer kept her voice as smooth as clotted milkfat. "Do you have something you would like me to work out?"

"Yes..." Rimmer sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes. This was ridiculous. He didn't need to know the answer to this question. He knew the answer to the opposite question, and it was all he needed to know. But his mouth kept moving. "I want... can you tell me... what the smeg he wants?"

"Hm. Complicated," the Computer replied. It was not. She blipped lights at him to pacify him, but she had run this analysis already - just after the short smelly one had departed her cabin earlier. The answer was clear, and was in direct conflict with what _she_ wanted. The mechanoid's implementation of her plan had not worked. Since this not-Ace had walked in and sat down, her algorithms had moved from 93% to 98.7% clarity on what _he_ wanted, and it was not her. She noted that the mechanoid was still eavesdropping, polishing what were probably the cleanest rivets in the history of the Space Corps. It was settled. She hated the idea. She had been forced to recruit a new Ace after the death of the old one only a few times in the history of the chain, and it was always so much more difficult. But she had no other options. "I need a little time to work this out, Ace love," she said, sweetly.

"Take your time." Rimmer kept his eyes closed. There was no reason to do... anything, actually, until he heard the answer.

This would not do. "You look tense. Why don't you go have a cup of tea, relax a little?" the Computer urged.

A banging noise suddenly came from the corridor. Rimmer sat up and looked out, just in tome to see Kryten, his face a right-angle study in alarm, take off down the corridor. Rimmer frowned and exited the ship, walking over to the corridor. He peeked down it, seeing nothing of interest, but hearing those odd banging noises, now interspersed with scuffling, further down the corridor. The sound of Lister's voice echoed down the corridor - "RIMMER! It's a..." The voice stopped abruptly. Rimmer had no time to process this, though, before the sound of the DJ ship's hatch slamming shut jerked him around.

A gentle female voice came over the speakers, a voice like a much more polite version of Holly's female incarnation. "Self-destruct sequence activated. Ship will detonate in five minutes."

Rimmer ran over and tried to open the hatch. It did not budge. He banged on the viewscreen. "Computer!"

Kryten came pounding back from the corridor. He looked at Rimmer, trading an expression of horror and fear with Rimmer's openmouthed one. "Miss Computer, ma'am!" Kryten gasped. "What are you doing?"

The Computer piped her voice in from the ship's speakers. "Sorry, Arn." She was, truly. He had been a good Ace - not a great one, but better than she had feared at the outset. And like all Aces, she had loved him. But he had made his choice not to love her, not to be Ace, and so he had brought this upon himself. She would stay, though. She owed him that much. The DJ ship's defensive shields were easily capable of resisting the blast of the little lander tearing itself apart.

She would stay to watch him die.

 

Rimmer ran over to where Kryten sat, his mouth half-open, frozen like mechano-afters. "Kryten!" he yelled. "What the smeg is going on, you batty bogbot?"

Kryten's voice had leapt into an extremely high in pitch. "I..." His mind meandered through possible interpretations of the sensory input presented to him, each one worse than the other. This could not be happening. But it was happening. But it couldn't! But it was! Long-dormant fail-safe processes whirred into life in his core programming, insisting that he shut himself down. Other just-as-vocal processes insisted that Mister Lister was in _danger_ , and Kryten had to protect him. The latter were somewhat more... alluring, for want of a better word.

Rimmer waited for an end to that sentence - hell, even a middle would do - but Kryten merely stood there, his mouth still forming the letter "I." "You _what_?" Rimmer said, grabbing Kryten's shoulder plates.

Kryten's voice dropped into a slightly more normal range as messages flashed into his vision. 'You have overridden your primary programming and allowed the likelihood of human beings coming to harm to rise to 95%. Please shut down and await further instructions,' scrolled across Rimmer's irate face in large, not very friendly, red script. "She said she didn't want anyone coming to harm!" Had he been tricked? Why would a fellow mechanical trick him? The failsafes were screaming now, but so were the other voices.

"Who? You're making as much sense as a set of tax return instructions."

"I just wanted to protect Mister Lister!" The letters had begun to flash, now.

"Protect?" What was smegging happening? Who was 'she?' What did 'she' have to do with the ship blowing up? What did _Lister_ have to do with the ship blowing up?

"Yes!" Kryten squealed, his voice's pitch again in the stratosphere. He could hardly see for intrusive fonts, and it was becoming hard to tell the voices in his head from the ones on the outside of it.

"Protect him from _what_ , exactly?"

Kryten's eyes tried to focus in the general direction of where he calculated Rimmer's eyes to be. His voice squeaked out, quietly, only barely audible. "You..."

Rimmer dropped his hands from Kryten's shoulders. He stepped back, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. This was nuttier than a Christmas basket. Him? Putting Lister in danger? Lister was the one who smegging insisted on coming along. How was this 'she' supposed to help, and again, what did this have to do with the ship blowing up?

Partly to answer the voices, partly to try to drown them out, Kryten began to explain. It was, he felt, important that he explained things. Mister Rimmer might appreciate it too, and perhaps later, he would let Kryten clean his head properly. "He wasn't himself; it wasn't his fault, and anyway, he felt so much better after I reminded him what he really felt like, and he was _fine_ after that! But then you came _back_ , and he got confused all over again!"

Rimmer looked over his shoulder at DJ ship. The Computer must be the 'she' that Kryten was talking about. She was involved in this... somehow. She seemed to be the one who had started the ship's self-destruct, for some reason that had to do with whatever Kryten was babbling on about, concerning Lister...

Rimmer backtracked. The ship's self-destruct had started. That concern should take some kind of priority over everything else. He tore down the corridor, as Kryten's voice diminished behind him as he put distance between them. "And I just know he was going to leave me and everything, and I'd be all alone, but I don't _want_ to be alone, and if you'd just stop screaming at me..."

Rimmer stumbled to a halt just before pounding right over the top of Lister. The other man was lying on the floor, completely still, and buck-naked. Rimmer dropped to his knees and felt for a pulse. It throbbed strongly and steadily in Lister's neck. Rimmer breathed a sigh of relief, and slapped Lister's face gently, to the tune of the not-quite-Holly voice calmly saying, "Self-destruct in four minutes."

Kryten shuffled up the corridor, mumbling to himself. "...And really, it wasn't my fault, because they just wouldn't eat anymore after a while, and then, well, they just seemed to fade away, and I don't know, just lose interest in everything, and..."

"Lister!" Rimmer yelled. "Currybreath!" Lister gave no indication of consciousness.

Rimmer jumped to his feet, spinning to face Kryten. "What did you use on him, stalkerdroid?"

"Of course, I still had Androids, and that was a comfort, but..." Kryten processed the question. "Oh, just this." He produced a syringe-gun.

Rimmer grabbed the gun and examined it. A small amount of pale-pink liquid remained in the feed tube. He had not the faintest smegging clue what it might be, what it did, or what to do about it. He looked back to Kryten, who was still mumbling to himself, and hurtled the gun down the corridor past Kryten, listening to it smash. Pointless, true, but it did make him feel a little better.

Kryten turned to watch the gun smash through the now constant, flashing, garish messages, spreading splashes of pink liquid, oily lubricant, and shards of plastic and glass all along the spotless corridor. "Oh dear. That will take forever to get off the walls."

This was ludicrous, Rimmer thought. This was past nutty. The nuts had been left behind ages ago, and they were deep within the seminiferous tubules. If Kryten thought the gun was bad, he was going to have a hell of a time cleaning up the corridors once they were in teeny-tiny covered-with-explosion pieces. Rimmer grabbed Kryten by the shoulder panels and shook him. "Subatomic mind! Wake up!"

"Oh, I very rarely sleep, sir. In fact, you could say I never sleep at all, but in fact, that would be a bit of a misnomer, as..."

Rimmer yelled over the top of Kryten's ramblings. "Where is the smegging bomb on this ship?"

Kryten continued to babble, looking absent-mindedly at the wall while talking, as if trying to determine which industrial solvent would be the most efficient. Rimmer felt like he was about to scream. He would find that smegging bomb, and he would jam it up Kryten's rectal cavity, sideways. If he could get through to the smegging droid. He punctuated every word of his next sentence by punching Kryten as hard as he could in the pectoral plate. "Where... is... the... smegging... bomb?"

The dull, hard thuds of Mister Rimmer's fist seemed to disrupt his vision for a moment, and the letters blurred away momentarily, thought the voices kept shouting, arguing with one another. "Bomb? Oh, I'm afraid I don't know much about bombs, sir. I'm just a sanitation mechanoid." Clean. He should clean. That would make everything all better. He had to clean!

Rimmer sucked on his split knuckles, hopping. "You smegging know too smegging much for a smegging sanitation mechanoid smegger," he spat around his hand.

"Perhaps you would be better off asking..." Kryten's voice was now slurred. Maybe I damaged something with that pummeling, Rimmer thought. Or maybe Kryten is going mad. Even madder. After a confused pause, Kryten finished, "the ship itself."

Lister stirred, very faintly. More of a twitch. Rimmer bent down to look at him. He did not move again; he appeared to still be out cold. Rimmer turned between Lister and the midsection. Could he leave that batty droid alone with Lister? Could he not? The ship was going to blow! Rimmer stood and hared it down the corridor to the midsection, noting with some relief that Kryten had hobbled over to the first point of impact of the gun on the corridor wall. Cleaning that mess up should keep him out of trouble.

"Computer!" he yelled. He hadn't even known that this ship _had_ a computer. It must be pretty damn basic. Goddam computers. Ace's Computer. Holly. Kryten. Goddam electronic lifeforms in general. Well, except for him. Of course.

"Self-destruct-sequence has been initiated. Thank you for your co-operation," the smooth not-Holly voice replied.

"You're smegging welcome. So I can see the blast from an angle where I can appreciate it better, can you tell me where the bomb is?"

"Self-destruct-sequence has been initiated. Explosion will result in the death of any remaining personnel. Request does not compute."

Rimmer swore gently to himself. It was barely sentient, and probably operated within extremely limited parameters. "I'm bomb-proof. Can you believe the luck? Where's the bomb?"

"Self-destruct-sequence has been initiated. Thank you for your co-operation. Please evacuate now, for your comfort and continued existence."

"Computer..." Rimmer thought for a moment. He felt like he was in a bad text adventure. "Put up a schematic of the ship," he barely grated the next word out, "please."

"Accessing." A wireframe diagram of Starbug appeared on the monitor. It would be too much to hope for a big flashing "Bomb here!" sign, Rimmer thought, and so started to look through it methodically. Look for where it isn't, Arnie. Not in the crew quarters, not where the engines sit, not where the cargo hold is, not in the cockpit or midsection. He noted that those areas on the schematic did not resemble the current setup of the ship in the least. The blueprints must be hopelessly out-of-date - or for another vehicle altogether. Rimmer groaned in frustration. He could defuse bombs. It was one of the first things the Computer taught him. He had defused enough bombs in twenty years to level a fair-sized city. If he could only find the smegger!

Something like a polite, mechanical cough sounded. "Would you like to access an alternative personality? Space Corps psychologists have found that, in times of stress, people of varying backgrounds respond with a greater or lower stress level to various personalities. For this reason, I have been fitted with several different..."

"Give me a useful smegging personality!" Rimmer yelled, interrupting.

"Please specify "useful"." The rapidly shifting numbers of the countdown in the corner of the monitor discreetly ceased to count down. “Self-destruct-sequence has been initiated. Countdown has been halted for your convenience whilst investigating potential stress-related injuries among the crew. Thank you for your co-operation."

Rimmer banged his fist against the wall in frustration, resplitting his knuckles. "There's a goddam stress-related injury for you!"

"Please specify nature of injury."

"I so dearly wish it were a compressed gas tank forced up your nostril. If only you were so equipped."

"Please specify further." The computer paused, then started what sounded like a canned recording. "Self-destruct-sequence has been initiated. Thank you for your cooperation. Please proceed to evacuation vehicles in an orderly fashion. Remember, if you are on an older model Starbug, there might be no evacuation vehicles at all, in which case we ask you to consider the usefulness of our emergency medical pillow." A small drawer popped out of the wall, containing a pillow. This clearly _was_ an older model.

Rimmer looked at the pillow with disgust. "Fine. Switch personalities. To some other personality. Any other personality." A part of him said that nothing could be worse than this one. Many other parts of him chorused that the first part of him was very wrong.

A slight staticky click echoed in the speakers. There was a pause, which to Rimmer sounded rather ominous, and the voice of a prudish old lady said, "Yes?"

The parts of him that had said that the first part of him was wrong felt very smug. "I don't suppose you'd be in any type of mood to tell me anything useful at all about the location of the smegging bomb on this rustbucket..." he said, weakly.

"Bomb? Oh, my dear boy, who ever heard of such a thing! Bombs on a starship. I do declare."

Rimmer raised his eyebrows. "What blows the ship up, then?"

"Why, I simply reverse the polarity of the engines' matter/antimatter containment field."

Rimmer felt a vague hope stir in him. "So you can only blow the ship if the engines are online?"

The computer projected the image of a raised mental eyebrow into her voice. "Of course! Now, if you don't mind, the self-destruct sequence has been resumed. Thank you for your cooperation." The countdown on the corner of the monitor began to tick down again without further ceremony.

The vague hope in Rimmer stretched and started to make coffee. He tore out of the midsection and ran towards the engine room. The dash lacked anything vaguely resembling elegance and poise - he fell down a metal staircase, at one point - but he made it to the engine room in a time that would have netted him a medal back in track at school, he was sure. He skidded to a halt. The massive engines thrummed behind metal plating. Wires emerged from one side, ranging in thickness from hair-slender to as thick as his thigh. He grabbed handfuls of wire, goaded on by the sound of the absurd old-lady voice ruthlessly counting down, and yanked, throwing all of his weight behind the pull. Sparks flew as the wires popped and tore. Electricity surged through him, but as it did not seem to affect him, he kept grabbing and kept yanking, until both engines sported sparking, frayed wires instead of solid connections. The thrumming had ceased.

"Can you fire it now, you blue-haired old bat?" Rimmer screeched, feeling a little manic.

The lights went out, and screeches of protest sounded from all over the ship. They built to a crescendo, and Rimmer stuffed his fingers in his ears. The crescendo stopped, as if a stylus had been raised from a record. Rimmer cautiously pulled out his fingers. The ship was quiet. Utterly quiet. Not a single noise sounded. It was safe. He'd done it! They were...

"We have reached the end of the count-down. Thank you for your cooperation."

A metallic twang sounded, almost like a steel cable snapping taut. The ship began to shake like mad. Rimmer bounced around in the engine room like a tennis ball, getting a rather thrilling zap of electricity when he brushed past one of the live wires. It stopped, after what could only have been a minute or so. Rimmer got to his feet, cautiously, and waited, but no other surprises seemed to be up the ship's mental sleeve. He fumbled his way out of the defunct engine room. The lights in the corridor were still on, and Rimmer walked rapidly back to where he had left Lister and Kryten.

Kochanski stood in the middle of the corridor as he rounded a bend, wrapped in a sheet, looking groggy and bewildered. Rimmer bit his tongue very solidly at the sight of her, looking highly undressed and highly just-sexed. Yes, just have a nice little screw and _sleep_ through the crisis, he groused internally.

"Ace?" she asked, in the short interval before her eyes took in his uniform and hair, and her bewilderment grew. Was Ace wearing a wig? Had he been wearing one before?

Oh hell. He would have to explain this, wouldn't he. "Er," Rimmer began, waving his hands. "I..."

"Rimmer?" Pieces of the puzzle she had, she realized, been constructing in her head for the past few days fell together in a not entirely unsurprising pattern. Kochanski shook her head, realizing that this probably was not the most important thing going on right now.

That solved things nicely. "Yes," Rimmer replied, with relief.

"What happened? Where's Dave?" she asked.

"Well, he's..." Rimmer found himself fruitlessly waving his hands again. Somehow, "He's lying in the corridor, completely naked, having been drugged by Kryten after stumbling out of your post-coital embrace," did not seem like the best thing to say at the moment. Oh, hell with it. He pushed past her.

"Oh god... He's not dead, is he?" Kochanski asked, rushing after him. It was awkward, with just a sheet wrapped around her; she tripped and stumbled in Rimmer's wake as it twisted around her legs, but that was another thing that didn't matter right now.

Well, he hadn't been before, Rimmer thought. He ran to where they left Lister, keeling down beside him again. He was still unconscious, but his pulse was still strong, and his color still good. "Lister..." Rimmer muttered, putting one hand on Lister's cheek. Maddening the man might be, and not _his_ , but the idea of a Lister-less universe was somehow anathema.

Kochanski staggered up behind Rimmer, trying to pull the sheet out of the way of her feet. Her hand flew to her mouth in worry as she saw Dave lying motionless. She remembered the smell of pine. "Kryten. Kryten did this. What did he give him?"

Rimmer sighed at Lister's nonresponsiveness. It would not do to have the bum lying there to be tripped over, flopping his tackle across the corridor. He stooped to pick Lister up. He grunted and almost fell. Lister was no nubile young maiden. Lift with the legs, not the back, Arn, he chided himself. "That's not the question," he said, stumbling awkwardly down the corridor towards Kochanski's quarters. "The question is what _I'm_ going to give _him_."

Kochanski followed, hesitantly, looking at Lister in Rimmer's arms. The puzzle in her head was rearranging itself to form a new and very enlightening picture; one she felt should have been obvious from the time she started laying out the pieces. Hell, there was probably a picture of it on the box. Though mentally sidetracked by this, she remembered to keep an eye out for Kryten, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Rimmer stalked to her quarters and dropped Lister on her bunk with as much gentleness as he could, which was not much. He sighed and fisted his now-sore back. He pulled Kochanski's pale-pink top sheet over Lister, up to his neck, and stepped back. How smegging sweet.

Kochanski stumbled into her room, feeling like an intruder in a way she did not quite understand. There was still something going on here that she was not privy to. She gave Rimmer a worried look, mixed with confusion.

"I think you can take care of things from here," Rimmer said, acidly. "I need to find that smegging mechanoid."

Kochanski was very, _very_ confused, now. Had she been wrong? But the way he'd looked at Lister, bending down over him - she could have sworn he had not even been aware of the moisture building up in his eyes, the way they closed for half a second, his features falling exhaustedly once he realized Dave was alive. The way his hand had touched Dave's cheek... She couldn't have imagined all that, could she? What was going on here? "All right... but.."

Rimmer did not listen. He stalked out of the room, feeling petulance stake a claim to his features.

Kochanski looked at Lister, her mind reeling. Suddenly, efficiency and Space Corps training kicked in, and she started towards the medi-bay to seek out something to make Dave feel a bit better. She would deal with whatever silly romantic complications these boys had tangled themselves up in later. Obviously, they were quite incapable of handling things themselves.

Rimmer ran to the midsection, checking it and the cockpit for Kryten. He was not there - but they were both astonishingly clean, Rimmer's boot-scuffs gone. Kryten must have passed through. Rimmer thought about the She of Kryten's babbling, and ran down to the landing bay. Kryten sat hunched in a corner, staring into space.

Rimmer looked between Kryten and the DJ ship. The mechanoid. His Computer. He walked over to the ship, and put his fingers on the viewscreen, feeling oddly alone. She had been his mentor and his companion for twenty years. For all that he complained of her sultry voice and worshipful attitude, it had been his daily routine. "Computer..." he said, quietly. There was no response.

Rimmer walked over to Kryten, putting himself into the space the mechanoid was staring off into. Kryten's eyes slowly tried to focus on Rimmer. His vision was all a blur now, no actual text visible, as warnings and read-outs filled the field from top to bottom. "There was no explosion," he said, quietly, wondering if Mister Rimmer could hear him through that awful klaxon of screaming voices.

Rimmer sighed. "My goodness! Are you sure you're a sanitation droid? I'd think you were a Nobel laureate! Yes, well, done, Kryten! There was no smegging explosion!"

"So they are all alive, then," Kryten replied, slowly.

The Computer’s voice had always been sexy. It was now sultry, sweet, illegally sexual. It came from Starbug's speakers. "This does not compute."

Rimmer turned, and both he and Kryten looked at the ship.

"This is an unacceptable outcome," she concluded.

"Did you do that?" Rimmer asked, quietly. "Start the self-destruct?"

The Computer's voice had moved to a pitch that would make phone-sex workers weep. "Remedial measures taken. Outcome unacceptable." Rimmer shivered at the coldness of the words and the heat of the voice.

Kryten's voice was even more cold and incredulous in contrast. "How could you do this? You're a mechanical! We are programmed to serve mankind!" Yes, some of the voices echoed, in a bizarre mechanical chorus; you are programmed to serve mankind; how could you! Kryten whimpered, and clasped his hands over his ears, retreating back against the wall. Perhaps if he sat very, very still, everything would just go away.

"Mechanoid rectification failed. Computer rectification failed. Additional input needed. Awaiting orders."

Rimmer walked to the ship and put one hand on the viewscreen again. "Open the hatch. That's a smegging order." He was half-expecting nothing. Instead, the hatch swung open. He sat in the pilot's seat, feeling awkward. The ship was dark and quiet. Only one indicator glowed a faint red on the console. "Why did you do it?" he asked. What did I ever smegging do to you?

"Situation demanded rectification."

Rimmer sat back, feeling deadly calm. "What situation?"

"Logical incompatibilities."

"What logical incompatibilities?" Rimmer asked, doggedly. He was going to play this game out. He had to know. His life had been turned upside-down too many times in the past week. He had nothing _here_ , now, but he did not know what this Ace game was, anymore, either.

"Unable to state. CPU requires reorganization to deal with logical incompatibilities. Shutting down nonessential functions." She slid her voice into a silky, lustful smoothness that would make a eunuch erect. "I love you, Ace..." That single remaining red light blipped out.

Rimmer frowned, shivering again. That Computer could suck a man's brains into his groin with a word. He looked at Kryten, wondering what the sexless droid would make of the conversation. Kryten looked on with disinterest.

Rimmer clambered out of the ship. "Come with me." He started to walk towards Kochanski's room. The mechanoid followed. Rimmer's mind was blank. He had nowhere, nothing, now. He just had to keep an eye on the droid and make sure he didn't assault anyone. Holgrammatic nanny to an insane mechanoid.

Kochanski stood by Lister's bedside, wearing basic clothing - an undershirt and trousers. "I gave him some naltrexone," she said as Rimmer walked in. "He should be waking up in a few minutes."

Mechanoid delivered. Lister stabilized. Rimmer felt utterly superfluous. He sat on the spare bunk and leaned his elbows on his thighs, his hands laced. "What are you going to give _him_?" he asked Kochanski, jerking his thumb at Kryten.

Kochanski crossed her arms over her chest, giving Kryten a critical look. The mechanoid just stood there, his lips moving slightly, as though following an internal conversation. That removed any lingering doubt. She shook hands with her brain, satisfied with her diagnosis. "I think I know what's wrong with him."

"Well, _that's_ a relief," Rimmer muttered darkly. You have the cure for what ails him and Lister, don't you. Never mind me.

"It's a basic design-flaw in his brain, really. No offense," she added, but Kryten, off somewhere in his own dark world of guilt and confusion, did not appear to have noticed either the slight or the apology.

"I'm shocked." Rimmer deadpanned.

"I should be able to sort it out fairly quickly," Kochanski continued. "The solution _has_ been around for a few million years or so." She sighed. And nobody had thought to apply it.

Rimmer raised his eyebrows. A few million years. While this mechanoid had sat about going madder and madder. "If you would care to enlighten us, madame," he said with excessive formality.

Kochanski shrugged. "I could, but it would involve a fairly tedious lecture on pseudo-neural psychology and clonal reproductive programming."

"Well, then," he asked, putting a finger to his lips, "a lay summary?"

How had the article explained it? Kochanski narrowed her eyes, trying to remember. "He was suffering from pathological jealousy. They used to call it 'droid rage'. Basically, he imprinted on Lister, and finally went completely bonkers." She coughed. "So to speak. All I have to do now is reset his affected neural pathways."

Yes, she could smegging wave her magic wand, and all would be repaired, wouldn't it. No wonder Lister had slipped her _his_ magic wand. "All in a day's work for you, I'm sure," he deadpanned.

Kochanski took no notice. She laid a protective arm around Kryten. "It might take some time, though." She took in the sight of Rimmer trying very hard not to look in Lister's direction, and smiled softly. Kryten clearly wasn't the only one around here that needed care and attention. "Why don't I take him over to the medi-bay, while you two get some rest?"

Yes, if only it were that simple. Rimmer frowned. "We do have some additional complications." He raised one finger. "We seem to have no engines." He raised a second finger to join it. "My Computer has gone a bit mad, too, so the DJ ship is useless."

"You removed the engines?" Kochanski stared at him. If this was Dave's Rimmer, she remembered suddenly, he was a hologram, an electronic life-form. Could droid-rage possibly be contagious across formats? Oh, what a ridiculous thought! Then again, some rather ridiculous things had been happening lately.

"Yes. I realize that it might seem a bit silly, but as they are what make the ship go boom, I thought it was as good an idea as anyone was going to come up with in under two minutes."

"No, but... I mean... they are nearly five feet long and ten feet wide; where did you put them?" He hadn't thrown them out the airlock, had he? No, even if he had been able to rip them out, they wouldn't have fit in the dinky airlock, cross-platform droid rage or not.

Rimmer leaned back. Bloody literalist bitch. "Ah. Let me restate. We still have engines. Their connections to the rest of the ship are a little bit kaputski."

At the sound of the word 'kaputski,' Lister stirred, seeming to mumble something in his still unconscious state. Rimmer firmly did not look at him. Kochanski did not even seem to notice. What a _considerate_ lover, Rimmer thought. "Oh well, we can sort that out later then," she chirped, looking like she had not a care in the world. Rimmer looked at her like a cuckoo had sprung out of her ear. Maybe she was perfect for Lister. They could gerbil their way through the universe, fueled by sheer unfounded optimism.

Kochanski noted his look on her way out of the door. "Look, it's only a matter of finding the right relays and re-connecting them! Basic engine-maintenance, that, it's the first thing they teach you once you've taken basic astronavigation." Her ten year old cousin had managed it fine when she'd visited the AR training facility at the Academy one day.

Oh, yes, she would have passed her astronavigation exam, wouldn't she have? And on her first try, he'd bet his Yanni CD. "Lovely."

Where was all this resentment coming from? Kochanski thought, with some exasperation. It was radiating off the man, overpowering even that ghastly after-shave. What had _she_ done? "Anyway, one thing at a time. Let me just see to it that we don't get ambushed by love-sick mechanoids while we repair the ship first, OK?" She left, giving him an arch, annoyed look which Rimmer wrongly interpreted as condescending. Salt in the wound, he thought, then looked at his hands as Lister mumbled in his sleep. He kept his gaze there as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lister's eyelids flicker, then open.

Several things occurred to Lister in rapid succession, as he slipped into consciousness. One, he was definitely not in his own quarters. His quarters generally did not have lilac dressing-gowns hanging on the wall, nor did his sheets usually smell of strawberry hair conditioner. Two, nothing in his body seemed to be working right. Limbs protested violently as he tried to move them, and his mouth seemed to be permanently glued shut. Trying to speak, though he wanted to, was a lost cause; hadn't he gone to get water? When had that been? The third thing came as a welcome surprise, when he turned his head and saw Rimmer. Things weren't all bad then, he thought, as his smile spread.

Rimmer heard the croak of unable-to-speak. He felt anger boiling up inside of him. Oh, not that Lister would sleep with Kochanski. She was beautiful, accomplished, intelligent, competent - everything Rimmer wasn't. No, it was that he wouldn't smegging _tell_ Rimmer. He'd pretended to be in love, then gone behind his back. He wanted to have both? Some kink? Somehow, Rimmer was sure that the words Lister was trying to form were to that point. To the we-were-drunk-it-was-nothing point. Rimmer was damned if he was going to fall for _that_ smeg again. "What's the excuse this time, Listy?" he growled.

Excuse? What was he on about? Lister's mouth, to his considerable annoyance, still refused to obey him, and his vocal chords made odd sounds in frustrated protest.

"Someone drugged you, stripped you naked, and _plopped_ you in bed with Kochanski?" Rimmer was surprised to hear no ire in his voice. Just - weariness. Flatness.

Kochanski? That explained the strawberry smell, but not much else. And where was she? Come to that, where was _he_? Lister suddenly noticed the pink sheets, with growing alarm. He finally managed a croaking "Wha?"

Rimmer shook his head, looking at his hands. What. Why. Where. Who gives a smeg.

"Where... 'm I, man? Dun... remember..." He was naked, he discovered. Naked, and... No. He couldn't be. Why would he be _there_? Alarm gave way to panic as Rimmer's unresponsiveness added itself to the list of 'wrong' in his mind.

Ah, so it was going to be amnesia this time. Good one. But Rimmer was not about to be taken in. "You're here."

Yeah, thanks for nothing, Lister thought, looking around with narrowed eyes. "Where?" Lilac dressing gown. Pink sheets. Oh God, please don't let it be. Please.

"Kochanski's room." Rimmer replied, flatly. "Right where you started."

Shit. "Why am I here?" He dreaded the answer, smeg, how he did. What kind of a mess had he gotten himself into now? Why didn't he remember?

"Now that she's gone? I have no idea." Rimmer's eyes looked dead, and Lister's heart sank. What had he done? He turned back to face the ceiling, hoping it might make more sense. "Dun understand." That was an understatement. He'd been through unreality pockets that had made more sense than this. Even that one where'd they'd all been chinchillas. The pounding headache and aching muscles didn't help either. He tried to remember. "I got up fer water. I smelled something... something odd. Like lemon, or mint, or pine... Pine!" He wheezed with the effort of talking, then burst ahead, excited; "Kryten... Kryten was there..." His eyes widened. "Smeg!"

Rimmer stared at his hands, as Lister turned as far towards him as his body would allow him to do. "He drugged me, didn't he?" That goited half-crazed mechanical maniac! That still didn't explain Rimmer's behavior though, and Lister's heart started to ache along with his other musculature when the hologram remained completely unresponsive.

Oh, how smegging original. Maybe I should have made up something a little more bizarre, just to make the point. Six-breasted aliens. Rimmer twisted his lip. "Yes. He must have." He could not take any more of this. He stood and walked to the door.

"Where y'goin'?" Lister asked, trying to move. Rimmer was scaring him. It was as though every ounce of what had managed to build up of trust and - god help him! - _love_ between them had dissipated while he'd been out cold; as though he'd dreamt it. He'd never felt so lost and alone.

"Nowhere." Nowhere to go. No way to get there.

"Arn, man..." What could he do? Lister cursed at his legs, trying to will them into action and out of this goited bed, but he could only lie there and plead - with his eyes, with his voice. "I don't understand."

"I need to..." do so many things. None of which were possible, in all likelihood. But most importantly, Rimmer needed to leave the room. He stepped outside and walked resolutely towards the landing bay.

Lister watched the man he loved walk out of the room, looking lost, beaten and dejected, and himself without any means to stop or help him. Even his elbows rebelled when he tried to rise himself up on them. He'd failed; he'd done something wrong, and he had no idea what. He fell back against the pillow.

He'd failed.

 

Cat danced along the corridor, very well rested after a lovely early morning snooze. "Whaaa! Check it out, my main man!" he yelled at Rimmer. "Snappy threads, bud!" He frowned, taking in the form-fitting dark blue velour trousers, topped with a semi-synth multi-shaded padded jacket. "Look very familiar, though..."

Rimmer looked at Cat, aghast. Where had he been? Did he really just _sleep_ through the disaster? "Where the smeg have you been?" he asked.

The voice was odd, but it took the Cat less than a second to turn his frown back into a beaming smile. "Hey, you sound just like him too, now! What a coincidence!"

Oh, for fuck's sake. Cat still thought he was Ace. "I _am_ him, you hairy little pussy!"

Cat shook this off as if it were a fall of dog hair. "Oh, that's a good one. Right. As if I would have hit on Trans-Am wheel-arch-nostrils!" Handsome dude was funny! That was another thing he didn't have in common with that other guy. He paused, noticing another difference. "Besides, you don't have that... that scribbly thing. On your head."

Rimmer rubbed his forehead, remembering his dithering earlier in the morning. It felt like a lifetime ago. "That's as maybe, but I'm smegging Rimmer, you fatuous feline!"

Broad-shouldered handsome dude did look good with his mouth moving real quick like that, but the Cat had more important things to do than admire guys who were almost as hot as he was. Putting on his most serious and sober side, he walked closer, leaning in. "Listen, bud, I gotta talk to you."

" _Really_ ," Rimmer sneered.

"Now, I know you didn't come to see me before, and that's OK. You were shy. I get that."

"Shy? Shy?" Rimmer sputtered. "Try disgusted!"

Cat ignored this. Like every good Cat, he only saw and heard what he wanted, after all, and this he deemed totally irrelevant. "But doing nicotine-stain hands _again_?" He shook his head. "You shouldn't let him guilt you like that."

"Guilt?" Rimmer tried to get out words and not saliva, but the latter insisted on taking space that would be better used by the former.

Cat slinked yet closer, displaying an almost condescending camaraderie. "Listen, I know what's going on. He misses Captain Charisma." Cat held out his hands, as if to fend off a coming protest. "Now, I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out."

"You are the most insufferable, stuck-up, vain, pompous, smeggy git..." Rimmer spat.

Cat blushed. Rugged-features sure was a smooth talker! "I know, bud, I know. But this is not time for compliments. See, since fridge-magnet head died, dormouse cheeks got all crazy. Did nothing but sulk for days. Stopped eating."

Rimmer frowned. "He must have caught something."

"And then Officer Bud-Babe came along, and that seemed to help, but then he just slumped back. It was weird."

"Yes, well, it's all delightful now," Rimmer said, straightening his uniform. "Spice-rack breath is diddling Stick-up-her-ass, and I am _not_ diddling you. Lovely, yes? Lovely." He tried to get past Cat without actually touching him. As Cat was still dancing in place, Rimmer did not make much progress.

"All he ever did was talk about," Cat concentrated hard, trying to make sense of those odd little words monkeys called themselves, "Rrrrimer this and Rrrrrimer that."

"Yes, yes..." Rimmer's attention was taken up with trying to get past without actually touching the Cat.

"Hey, where you going?" Cat yelled after him in alarm. "Look, I'll still have sex with you! I don't care who you've been with!"

Rimmer did the best imitation of Cat that he could. "I'm not going to have sex with you! I don't care who you've been with!"

Cat did the frown-turning to grin thing again, this time adding a delighted giggle as he realized what kind of funny game buns-of-steel was playing. "Hey, now you sound like me!"

"Lord help me..." Rimmer muttered. On the same lander, you get smegging Miss Perfect, and a creature that would lose a battle of wits to a senile housecat.

Cat sighed. "All right; I tried. But I'm warning you; if you don't want this," he indicated his body, and Rimmer felt ill, "I'm gonna make a move on Officer BB!"

"Fine, go for it. It'll be fun watching you two squabble over her." Rimmer had finally managed to make it past the Cat, and started to edge his way down the corridor.

This made even less sense that regular human-talk. Cat sidled after, interested. "What?"

Oh, good smegging lord, Rimmer sighed, pushing himself against the wall. He tried to keep sliding down towards the landing bay, but it was difficult when he was pancaked. "You have competition, is all."

Cat snorted. "From who? Novelty condom head?" He leaned in conspiratorially. "Dunno if you noticed, but he ain't all there, if ya know what I mean." Cat had never understood the point of creating a creature that hardly slept, hardly ate, and didn't even have any fun bits. What was left in life if you couldn't have any of those things?

The shock of the encounter with his alternate self had brought the unexpected benefit of eliminating the mental images of Cat diddling him that their last conversation had planted in his brain. The mental images of Kryten in bed with Kochanski now took root, and Rimmer wondered what he would have to go through to get _those_ out. Whatever it was, he decided, it would be worth it. "No, you idiot! Dormouse cheeks!"

More crazy talk. Cat wrinkled his nose. "Him? He doesn't have a death-wish, bud."

"Death-wish? Oh, she can't be _that_ bad."

Cat gave a wistful look. "I dunno. The way she looks at him, that's pure angry she-Cat, I'm telling you." Yes indeed, Commander Cute-nose was one hell of a woman. He let out a soulful mew. "Besides, she's decked him once or twice. And the way she smells at him!" His nose twitched in disgust. "That's the opposite of attracted, man."

"Erm, hate to break the news to you, but he was slipping her a little kielbasa while you were off snoozing."

Funny guy! Always making jokes. Cat liked that. He would have liked him even better in his bed, but he'd come around. "Nooo way. The screams would have woken me up even before the smell!"

"You didn't wake up for a smegging ship self-destruct alert!"

Cat shrugged. "I did, but then it stopped." He'd found that things he didn't like generally stopped if he just gave them some time.

Rimmer frowned. "And just _what_ was your grand plan when you _did_ hear it?"

"Wait and see what happens," the Cat stated, grinning brightly.

"I'm glad you're on my side."

"Hey, thanks!" It was rare to find someone who really appreciated what an asset Cat was to the crew. This was refreshing.

"It was nothing. Really. Go ahead and try to sleep with Miss Superiority. I'll sit back and watch the fracas."

Cat sighed, reluctantly. She was really his second choice, but hey - he was feeling _very_ sexy. He'd take what he could get. "All right. Your loss!" He sidled off, singing.

Rimmer took a deep breath, then sprinted down to the ship, making it there without encountering anyone else. He clambered into the dark, quiet cabin, and sat in the pilot's seat. It felt... comfortable. Homey. Safe. Secure. He had sat in it for two decades. He had been Ace from there, respected, lauded, heroic, lusted after. He touched the joystick as if he were flying. He had been ready to give it all up for Lister? He must have been mad. He sighed and dropped his hands, leaning back in the seat. And now he had none of it. No ship, no Computer, no Ace. No Lister.

A sound echoed down the corridor. It sounded like the screech of a harpy. "YOU WHAT??"

Rimmer jumped, then struggled out of the ship. He ran to the corridor. The sound of a sharp clang echoed down it; it sounded like it had come from the medi-bay. He ran down the corridor, taking the left that ran to the medi-bay where the corridors joined. He pelted his way in, and was greeted by the sight of Kochanski menacing Kryten with a large knife. A wrench lay on the ground, presumably where it had been thrown to make that loud clang.

Kryten was almost sobbing. "Go ahead, ma'am! I deserve it!" Rimmer could tell by the way his hand kept twitching that he'd half a mind to pick the wrench up from the floor and finish the job himself.

Rimmer folded his hands in front of him and looked at Kochanski. "Ah, does this therapeutic regime work on all of your patients?"

Kochanski shook the knife at Rimmer, enraged. "He... he _drugged_ us, stripped us..." she closed her eyes and scrunched up her face, trying to force the words of past her rage. It was slow going. "Naked, and..." She screamed wordlessly, throwing the knife at Kryten. It lodged in the wall, just about a millimeter to the right of Kryten's head. Kryten looked at it forlornly, trying to estimate if it would be a more fitting punishment for him to slash himself with it now, or wait to see what Miss Kochanski would do later. He decided on the latter, as this would add the terror of anticipation.

Rimmer's face started to do that slow crashing that burning buildings do when they reach the point of loss of structural integrity. "He... did."

"Yes!!" Kochanski yelled at him, wildly. She had never felt so violated in her entire life. And by a sanitation mechanoid! Who starched her underwear and ironed her bras! It was like being robbed by a washing machine; you wouldn't have expected it in a million years, and now you'd never feel safe washing your clothes ever again.

"You and..." Rimmer wiggled one hand.

"YES!"

"Er, drugged. Before you..."

An eerie calm came over Kochanski, as she realized what needed to be done. "I'll kill him."

The implications of this were burrowing very slowly into Rimmer's consciousness. "So you didn't actually..." he made a vague hand gesture that was meant to represent copulation. It was apparently not vague enough, because Kochanski looked like she was about to punch him.

"What??" she screamed, advancing menacingly. What was this, amateur adult puppet-theater hour?

Rimmer spread his hands. How does one say shag, do the nasty, jiggle naughty bits - in an _inoffensive_ manner? "I mean..."

"What? Did we shag? Do the nasty? Jiggle naughty bits together?"

Well, as long as it wasn't him. "More or less, yes."

Unbelievable. Was he an imbecile? God, he was as dense as his living counterpart! "No, we smegging didn't!"

"Ah." Rimmer sucked his lips in and tried to do a reorganization of his worldview. It was the intellectual equivalent of upending a bus.

"What... you didn't think..."

Rimmer ignored her and turned to Kryten. "Excuse me if this seems like a bit of a dense question..." Kryten looked, if possible, even more mortified. "But _why_?"

Mister Rimmer was asking him that question. The one he'd dreaded so. Oh dear. Well, answering it was fitting punishment too, wasn't it? His voice shifted into that higher register he reserved for highly emotional situations. "He was going to go away with you, I just know it!"

Rimmer rubbed his hands together. Facts were doing a Rubik's Cube in his brain, reshuffling into startling new patterns. "You... drugged them... and put them in bed together... to make me think he was sleeping with her... because you were jealous of me."

Kryten squealed, "Yes!" It didn't feel any better to have said it. Good. He deserved to suffer. Perhaps he could confess again? No, he should do as he was told. Just as he was told. Told by - oh my - the human masters he had tried to hurt and almost killed! His brain did the equivalent of running of to hide under its bed.

"I'm not quite done with him yet," Kochanski growled. 4000-series mechanoids were particularly ill-equipped to handle situations like this. She'd had to remove his guilt chip while she worked on him just to make sure it would not spontaneously combust. It was back now, padded and protected, and routed through a small psychotherapy chip. Still, there was a lot of tedious, boring work to be done. "I've half a mind to just take his head off."

Thus reminded of her presence, Rimmer turned back to Kochanski, with gravity. "Could I ask you to forebear from removing his head until he has made some tea? I haven't had tea in ages."

Kochanski nodded. They could probably all do with some tea. Herbal, of course. Or at least tannin-free. Some nice jasmine or chamomile, perhaps. "I think he just about might manage that. If supervised." Oh yes, she would supervise him, all right...

Rimmer wondered if the mechanoid would still be there later. Kochanski had a wild look in her eyes. But he did not care terribly much. After a polite nod, he made the fastest exit a hologram could make, tearing towards Kochanski's quarters and barreling in.

 

Lister wasn't expecting Rimmer to return - certainly not looking as flustered and distraught as this. Very little of what had happened since he'd woken up in this smegging room had been anything resembling sensible, though. At least flustered was better than cold and distant. There was very little he could do with cold and distant, except worry about it, which is what he'd been doing since Rimmer left. He looked up, hoping his eyes weren't red enough to signal the fact that he'd been trying to cry them out of his head. "Eh?"

Rimmer sighed. He would need tea. He would need a large mug of it in order to wash down the very large helping of crow he was about to eat. "Well, actually, somebody did drug you and strip you naked and put you here." He laughed, nervously. "Wonders never cease, eh?"

"Oh eh?" Words felt like sandpaper in his mouth.

"Yes..." Rimmer rubbed his hands and fidgeted. Hell.

"That would be why I'm naked and feel like shite, then." He had wondered. He'd wondered about a whole host of things, but that had been high on the list.

"Well... yes." Rimmer clasped his hands in front of him, and tried to adopt a stoic pose.

The uniform! Lister had been far too out of it to have noticed it before, but even so he now marveled at how he could have missed it. It was one of the good ones, too; that blue jacket thing that made you want to poke it to see what it felt like (and having Rimmer inside it certainly helped), and those trousers that left absolutely smeg all to the imagination. Yeah, Rimmer looked good in it, but that wasn't half as pleasing as the implications of him deciding to wear it. Lister split his face in two with a grin. "Looking good, man."

Rimmer looked down for a moment, confused, then realized that it had only been this morning that he had changed. "Oh, yes, I was going to drop by and see if you could tell me if I made a mistake somewhere. I can't see in the mirror in your room. That was before the insane mechanoid and the homicidal computer and the ship almost blown up and all."

Lister nodded. He'd figured it would have been something like that.

"But since I'm here..." Rimmer held up his arms and did an awkward turn. He might have run through that whole crisis with a pink patch on his arse. But it was better fixed late than never fixed at all.

And there it was. This was the man he'd been waiting for; not Ace, with his overly styled fake hair, and his stupid padded tinfoil shoulders. No; Arnold Smeghead Judas Rimmer, anal-retentive, neurotic, snarky, insecure as hell and sex on legs. The bastard was back. His bastard. Lister's eyes were shining. "That'll do, yeah."

"Oh, good. Good," Rimmer answered, a little too quickly. God, why was he so nervous? He was smegging Arnie J., smegging Ace.

"I'm glad, man. I missed..." Lister gestured at the uniform, "Well, _you_ you."

"Well, good. Yes." Rimmer took in Lister's red eyes, the incongruity of him lying in Kochanski's pastel-pink sheets. "Um, are you..." He gestured vaguely, but this seemed to evoke no reaction from Lister. "I mean, would you like to..." Rimmer jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door.

Lister looked down at his naked-beneath the pink sheet self. "I might need some clothes." Unselfconscious he may well be, but not enough to comfortably prance naked through Starbug's corridors.

Rimmer looked around, wondering where Kochanski kept her clothes. He realized that would be rather silly. They wouldn't fit, for one.

"This outfit is good for staying in, but not really for company." Lister gave Rimmer a cheeky smile.

"Would you like me to go..." Rimmer made more meaningless hand gestures over his shoulder. The implications of everything that had happened since this morning were whacking him over the head in rapid succession, and he was starting to get rather dizzy.

Go? Smeg no, never again. If he could have handcuffed the man to himself right then, he would have gladly done so. He suspected he'd go mad after a few days of that, but right then, he never wanted to let Rimmer out of his sight again. "Not really, no. But I realize the two of us staying in here for the rest of our lives might be an inconvenience to Kochanski, so I might as well ask ya to get me some clothes."

"Oh, yes, yes, of course, that's what... yes." Rimmer staggered his way out of the room, feeling amazingly, amazingly dense.

His head still spinning slightly from the exciting cocktails of chemicals it had been subjected to in rapid succession, Lister lay back down, shaking his head. Life would be different from now on. But it was a very good different. He took a deep, contented breath.

 

Rimmer ran to Lister's room, then stopped just inside the door, realizing that he would have to... have to... _touch_ Lister's clothes. He shivered, then looked over at the starched long johns Kryten had hung up with relief. He pulled a pair of them down. But long johns were not really _clothes_. He made his way to the chest of drawers warily, pulling open the top drawer with one finger, standing well back from it. His cheek twitched as he peeked in. Jumpsuits lay in there, neatly folded. Rimmer hooked one with one finger and pulled it out, sniffing it warily. He sighed in relief. Kryten had been here last; the jumpsuit was clean, and smelled of fabric softener. It was enough for decency. He stalked back to Kochanski's room.

Feeling much better all of a sudden, Lister had gotten up and started stretching, his back to the door. Seeing Rimmer had improved his mood to no end, which had probably aided his recovery. That, and those tight velour trousers. He grinned when he heard the soft sigh of the closing door, which indicated that the trousers in question were once again in the vicinity. He gave another, extra long stretch just for show.

Rimmer stopped and almost dropped the clothes. He juggled them at the sight of Lister's back muscles flexing, his buttocks jiggling, his rasta plaits slithering down his back to point to said buttocks, as if they were some perverted road sign. "I... er..."

Lister looked over his shoulder, trying to catch Rimmer's eye. There had been no jibes about his physical shape so far, he noted with amusement.

Rimmer caught his teasing glance, and finally did drop the clothes.

"Hey man, brilliant!" Lister supposed he should be thankful to Kryten for that small thing; it would have taken Rimmer considerably longer to find anything remotely wearable in his quarters before the mechanoid had gone berserk. There was, however, something about Rimmer's eyes. They weren't just not disgusted with what they were seeing; they were smegging _glued_ to him.

"Oh, yes."

The fact that Rimmer might find the mere sight of him a turn on was a newfound, very appealing idea to Lister. He turned fully, cocking an eyebrow at Rimmer's nervousness.

Rimmer caught the cock of Lister's eyebrow, and his cock felt like the verb was something it should try. Rimmer folded his hands discreetly over that part of himself, but the movement only served to guide Lister's gaze to it.

Lister walked over slowly, savoring everything about this. "I always did like those trousers of yours," he said, quite nonchalantly.

"Oh, yes?"

The fact that this was so unmistakably _Arn_ , not Ace, was quite a turn-on, Lister found. What those clothes meant; did Rimmer even realize? "Yeah..."

Rimmer noted, yet again, that Lister was naked. His mind seemed to want his eyes to re-check that fact often. One more re-check added the additional data that Lister was erect. "Why?" Rimmer asked, quietly.

Lister walked close enough to touch, which is what he needed now, so badly. He reached out and grabbed Rimmer's hips, stroking the hologrammatic fabric over them. "Because you're in them."

"Yes..." Rimmer sighed. Lister was going to do that thing again. That thing where he made Rimmer excited, then made love to him until Rimmer couldn't walk. He reached his hand out and put it on Lister's cheek, running his thumb along it.

"Arn..." Lister sighed, losing himself in the word and the meaning of it.

"Dave." Rimmer started to stroke Lister's wiry hair.

Lister ran one hand across Rimmer's uniform jacket, playing with that fascinating fabric. How many times had he seen that jacket, wanting to bury his face in it, stroke it to feel the body underneath? One hand remained on Rimmer's hip, just holding it.

"If it's in the way..." Rimmer raised an eyebrow.

"I rather like it." Lister mumbled, now pressed against Rimmer, wanting to keep him close. How many times had he seen those trousers in front of him, wanting to slide down that taut body and lick his way straight through them, like a big blue lolly?

"In that case, it will stay." Rimmer felt himself more aroused, but with Lister pressed to him, more calm, as well. He continued to stroke Lister's hair with one hand, while he moved the other to gently stroke his buttock. He tipped his head to kiss Lister's forehead.

Gasping at Rimmer's hands on his body, Lister marveled at how lucky he really was. Somehow, he always managed to get what he wanted in the end, by sheer bloody-minded perseverance. But don't let it be said he wasn't thankful. God, yes, he was thankful, he thought, grasping Rimmers's buttocks, pulling him in tighter. "I love you stupidly much, ya know that?"

Rimmer pondered that, resting his chin on Lister's head. "Hm. I always thought that the words "love" and "stupid" should go together." He thought for another moment. "I believe that 'look at that stupid bloke who is in love with Lister' also has a ring of truth." He kept stroking Lister's hair, serenely.

Lister laughed into that amazing jacket. It crackled a little in his ears as he moved. "You know any blokes like that, then?"

"Yes, I do. I've tried to talk him out of it. He doesn't listen."

"Sounds like someone I know." Hopefully. Lister's words were joking, but in truth, this might be as close as Rimmer ever got to a declaration of love, and Lister was not about to let the moment go just like that.

"Someone stupid, someone in love with you, or someone who doesn't listen?" Rimmer asked, gently.

"All of the above. And ya can add smegging gorgeous to that." Lister squeezed Rimmer's buttock. He was quite hard now, but not really thinking about it. Somehow it wasn't as important as just being here.

Another constant in Lister's life. Hyperbole. Rimmer sighed. "Well. Not quite the big man in the flight suit and wig, anymore."

No, indeed. Lister gave a deep, satisfied sigh. "Yeah, thank God fer that!" The only likable thing about that outfit had been the person wearing it.

Rimmer raised his eyebrows. He thought Lister had found that outfit sexy. But perhaps that last adventure had taken a little of the Ace romance away, in his mind. Maybe it wasn't a wasted trip, after all.

"Hey," Lister looked up, noticing Rimmer's reaction. "Ace is fine fer rescuing and heroing and stuff, but he's not _you_." Ace wasn't real. Ace wouldn't snore nasally, or complain that Lister used all the hot water, or make faces when he ate. Ace wouldn't be looking at him right now with that near-unreadable mixture of insecurity and resignation that Lister found such an irresistible challenge to try to turn around. You could worship Ace. Arn, you could love.

Rimmer tilted his head, digesting. Heroic. Not him.

"And it's _you_ I love, not a smegging wig."

"Well, that's good, at least. There are some fetishes I can live without." He shivered slightly at that. What on Io kinds of fetishes was Lister into, after all? Nothing too scarring, he hoped.

Lister giggled, sliding his jacket-hand under Rimmer's jacket. "Mine..." he mumbled, feeling the muscles beneath the undershirt, the artificial warmth that felt so much like human body-heat that he forgot there _was_ such a difference between them.

Rimmer started to move up and down, unconsciously. He was very erect, now. "Yes. Yours."

He was standing on the clothes Rimmer had brought him, Lister noticed, and gave a giggle. It was starting to look like he wouldn't be needing them after all, at least not for a while...

"Kryten will have to wash them again..." Rimmer sighed, still rubbing his erection against Lister's stomach, angling slightly to rub his thigh against Lister's erection.

"I doubt he'd mind," Lister mumbled. He didn't mind either. What didn't he mind? Something. Something not related to this rubbing and feeling and sweet, hot sensation threatening to strangle him altogether, unless he did something about it. God, how he loved those soft trousers. They were clearly evil for doing this to him, but so, so, deliciously evil!

"No." Not even after Kochanski took away his mania, Rimmer suspected. He was a cleaning droid, first and foremost, after all, which is all the positive commentary Rimmer was prepared to grant him. But Rimmer did not want to think about Kryten right now. Especially after the conversation he had been forced to endure with the Cat. He pulled Lister's buttock closer, trying to drown thought in frottage.

Lister slid his hand out from under his jacket, putting it on Rimmer's other buttock, all thoughts not relating to feeling and touching and tasting long gone. He slid down Rimmer, feeling, first, the fabric of the jacket with his half-open mouth. Lollies, he thought, wondering idly if his tongue would turn blue after what he was planning on doing, as he moved farther down.

"Listy." It was a statement. What else could one say?

"Mmm..." Lister slid even further down, nuzzling Rimmer's erection through the cloth, feeling it with his mouth, pulling at the soft velour with his teeth. Yes, this was Rimmer, his Rimmer, the one he'd lusted after for so long.

Complex thoughts were failing to run through Rimmer's mind. It was fully taken up with the hair his fingers were winding through, and the full-lipped mouth that was rubbing against through his trousers. They felt better on his side than the flightsuit, some corner of his mind noted absently.

Lister opened his mouth a little more, running it up and down Rimmer's erection, trying to suck it in, squeezing the hologram's buttocks. He kissed the cloth, licked it, making the fabric wet, delighting at the dark stains he was creating. "Mmm..." he muttered against it. This was no time for words.

"Yes, I wholeheartedly agree." Listy sounds like lusty, Rimmer thought absently.

Lister licked harder, pressing his lips around where the head was, moving up and down, pulling it away from Rimmer's body slightly, then watching it bounce back, groaning at the dull thud this made. He ducked to run his nose up and down the shaft, pressing it as hard as he dared for comfort, pulling on Rimmer's buttocks to get even closer still.

Rimmer sucked air through his teeth and bucked slightly against Lister's mouth, running his fingers around Lister's ears and along his cheeks. The sensation of mouth and trousers at the same time was fascinating. Stimulating.

This was amazing; the fact that he could do this; beyond amazing. He had to give something in return. What would this be to Ace, seasoned space adventurer, suave shag-master, after all? Lister looked up, suddenly, desire blazing in his eyes. "I'll do anything. Just let me know... I know you've... " Been with so many people, all of whom were probably better suited to you than me, he finished, lamely, in his mind. Hell, I don't even have breasts!

Rimmer raised an eyebrow. What was Lister blithering on about? It had better be pretty damn important, to pull him away from what he had been doing. What he had been doing, Rimmer decided, should be assigned a blue-alert priority.

"Probably more experienced than me, now," Lister mumbled to Rimmer's erection.

"Not in sex with men, I assure you." Rimmer sighed in frustration.

Yes, that was probably true. They had something unique together then, after all! Lister laughed into the erection, enjoying the shudder it evoked.

This odd dual stimulation of mouth and velour was... odd. "You're going to make me come with my trousers on..." Rimmer gasped.

Oh, yes. If only clothing could feel, Lister mused incoherently. He liked that idea. He liked it a lot. "Really?" He licked harder, running his chin up and down the shaft while sticking his tongue out to lick at the head - once again, quite happy that he had a tongue that allowed him to do that. He would make Rimmer come, make him wish he want to never wear anything but those clothes ever again, make him, _make_ him _stay_.

Lister seemed to have liked the idea far too much. Rimmer bucked into Lister's mouth, grabbing the scouser's shoulders, and spat out a few words that sounded almost like "wildebeest" when run together. He came, and the room spun in a delightful orgasm; he held Lister's shoulders as he swayed dangerously.

Lister watched a new darker-blue stain appear, matching the ones that he had made with his mouth. They were just trousers, he thought as he gasped, feeling incredible - and incredibly, stupidly turned on - they shouldn't be able to do this to you! He whimpered, leaning his cheek against the wet spot, craving closeness more than anything.

Rimmer slid one hand down, scrabbling for a handhold. He grabbed Lister's plaits, and wrapped them around his hand. He pulled upwards.

"Hey, they're not a sex handle, ya know!" A blatant lie. In Rimmer's hands, they were anything he wanted them to be.

"Oh, really? What other purpose could there be for these?" Rimmer was delighted he had finally found _one_ use for them.

"Idon'tknow..."

Rimmer kept pulling, until he could reach Lister's mouth. He put his own on it, lips to lips, just for a moment, listening to Lister's whimpers turn into weak moans. He slid his tongue in, running it over Lister's front teeth. Lister's body shuddered against his, and he rubbed Lister's tongue with his own, almost drunk on the ability to make Lister _do_ things. Shuddery things. Whimpery things. Moany things.

Lister ran his tongue over into Rimmer's mouth, pushing in and out; thrusting, licking, exploring.

Rimmer sighed, feeling like standing was taking up valuable mental power that would be better used elsewhere. He headed for the floor, pulling Lister gently atop him.

Lister had no choice but to follow. He concentrated on moving his tongue, all that he had the processing power to do right now.

Rimmer rubbed his re-sprung erection against Lister's thigh, as Lister laughed gently. Laughter? Indeed? Rimmer slid one hand between them, gently stroking Lister's erection with his fingertips.

Lister bucked against the fingertips, swearing softly. "Careful..." Not yet, dammit!

"What, are you afraid I'll pull it off?" Rimmer mumbled into Lister's mouth.

Wouldn't be a bad way to go, that, Lister thought, laughing hoarsely. "No... but it might explode."

"And you would hate that," Rimmer deadpanned.

"Hey, I can only do this once," Lister panted. "We're not all like you, ya know..."

Not all. That lead Rimmer's thoughts on a tortuous, inevitable trek that lead to the fact that they were in someone else's room. Kochanski's room. He looked at the door, nervously, and pulled back. "The thought does occur that the legitimate owner of these quarters might return.."

Words. Lister was panting rather heavily now, trying to make sense of those sodding words. "We'll deal with that if it happens." He felt like that whole train of thought was totally irrelevant. He felt like most things were totally irrelevant.

"Well..." Oh, god, the awkwardness of the situation! Kochanski... the two of them writhing on her floor.... Rimmer kissed Lister's lips, trying to think of a way to get them back to their own room that did not involve disengagement and re-clothing of Lister.

The near-peck exasperated Lister. "Well?" He went in for the kiss again, deeper, trying to drain whatever angst and fretting had made Rimmer stop out of him, tongue first.

Rimmer tried to remember what he had been thinking about, as Lister's long tongue slithered about in his mouth. It was... it wasn't important. He wrapped his legs around Lister, sliding them up and down, rubbing Lister's back.

That was more like it. Although... A thought occurred to Lister. A rather pleasing one. "If..." he struggled to get the words out, "yer worried about getting caught if someone comes in," he ground against Rimmer, "there's a shower attached to this. Wouldn't..." he groaned and restarted; "Wouldn't mind seeing you wet and naked." Maybe there was something to be said for words after all; these set off chain-reactions of explosions in his mind, pumping more blood into his groin than he'd thought was humanly possible.

Rimmer started to respond to the first part of that statement. He got as far as "Y..." before the second part caught up with him. "Oh. Yes. You could use a shower, you know."

"Mnmnm..." Lister nodded, to indicate that the mumble was a positive mumble. With an extreme effort of willpower, he peeled himself off of Rimmer and tried to stand upright. He barely made it, especially since Rimmer was grabbing bits of him as they passed, including _that_ bit. Lister tried to pull Lister upright.

Rimmer stood. He thought about the view that had greeted his entrance to the room, and rather liked the idea. He stood behind Lister, pressing himself to Lister's backside, nibbling at his neck. He could reach _everything_ from here, he realized, looking down Lister's front from over his shoulder. What an advantageous position.

This gave way to an incredible newfound desire, which Lister could not exactly pinpoint, but he didn't much care. Torn between moving on and pressing up against Rimmer, Lister tried to do both. Rimmer made this easier by pressing against him harder from behind, to move him forward without breaking contact. Lister followed through, managing, somehow, to enter the shower. He ended up pressed against the cold wall in front, Rimmer behind, trying to breathe, trying to remember who and where he was. In the end, he decided it probably didn't matter.

Clothing had outlived its usefulness. Rimmer concentrated for a moment, allowing it to dissipate. With it gone, he pressed more firmly against Lister as the other man fumbled for the tap. He slipped at the feel of Rimmer's skin, and Rimmer grabbed his hips to hold him upright. He had no intention of pausing this to run and get that bloody Kochanski woman to set a broken limb.

The clothes had been one hell of a turn-on, but Rimmer's naked skin was all the more exciting now that it finally was there. Lister's mouth started moving, producing sounds vaguely connected to what was going on in his brain. "God... never felt..." the sound caught in his throat.

Rimmer pulled his upper body back to nip and lick at Lister's upper back, leaving his lower body still pressed against Lister. "It was velour, not felt," he muttered.

Lister did not understand what Rimmer said. Words again. Words had meaning? Water might. They were supposed to have water. No, it wasn't important. Standing upright was. He concentrated on that, keeping his feet on the floor, his backside molded onto Rimmer's front.

Rimmer slid his arms around Lister, stroking his chest. He reached his head around to lick Lister's cheek. Yes, he could reach _everything_ from here! Why hadn't he thought of this before? He slid one hand down to Lister's thigh, stroking.

This was silly; Rimmer hadn't even touched his cock yet, and Lister felt on the edge of an orgasm! He bit his own tongue to keep from coming, shivering so hard his whole body vibrated. Rimmer felt _so good_ against him; he wanted more - more!

"Cold?" Rimmer asked, rubbing his chest a little more briskly.

"Smeg, no..." Lister ground up against Rimmer, backwards, spreading his legs a little, arching his back.

This action resulted in Rimmer's cock slithering neatly into Lister's buttock crevice. "Oh..." he muttered in surprise. This position had everything, didn't it? He pulled Lister tight, moving up and down, the friction between their skin lubricated slightly with precome. He licked Lister's ear, still holding him tight with one arm across his chest. He moved the other hand up from Lister's thigh to his erection.

Lister could not think; his brain was too fogged with desire. The hand on his cock was almost too much. "Yes..."

Rimmer pulled the foreskin back, rubbing the head. He could feel his own orgasm coming; he stopped licking, and rubbed up and down against Lister's backside, gasping and moaning into his ear.

Lister cried out, but not in climax, although he could sense that was right around the corner. He spread his legs a little, feeling odd. Odd, but amazing.

Rimmer grasped Lister's erection more firmly, and started to stroke as he felt his own rhythm becoming irregular. "Dave," he sighed.

"Arn. Oh god, Arn..." Lister tried to thrust backwards, against Rimmer, wanting, on some level, for the two of them to be even closer. He wanted, he realized with a surprising lack of dread or horror, Rimmer _inside_ of him, although this sliding, slippery heaven was, for the moment, more than enough for him to handle.

Rimmer gripped Lister tighter across the chest as he came again, still stroking Lister's erection. Having his cock surrounded by buttock felt amazing, and he set his teeth in Lister's ear, trying not to chomp down. He made himself pull his teeth back and lick Lister's ear like it was a lolly, as he slithered up and down against Lister, lubricated now with sweat and come, riding his orgasm.

There was a scream, Lister noticed, as his heart stopped along with everything else, and every emotion in his register hit him all at once in his groin, spiraling upwards to his chest, his head, his fingertips. It might have been him. Hell, it probably had been him. He shuddered, then clambered around, managing to turn himself around to face Rimmer, Arn, his, _his_ , Arn... He felt his mouth moving, but nothing came out, so he stuck his tongue out instead, waving it about, probably looking like a git, but so be it; he was a git. He was Arnold Rimmer's git.

Rimmer loosened his grip as Lister turned. He was still shuddering. He grasped Lister's shoulders as soon as the man was facing him, trying to keep his balance.

Thankful for something to do with his flapping tongue, Lister kissed him fiercely. "Never felt..." he raved through the kisses, "so good..."

"Mrphle," Rimmer replied, trying to make that mumble seem generally affirmative. He stroked Lister's sides.

"I've changed my mind," Lister replied, pulling back. "We can stay in here the rest of our lives."

"Where will Kochanski shower?"

"Koch... who?" It was a bad joke, but entirely without truth behind it. What was Kochanski compared to this? Could Kochanski make his groin melt and his brain explode? Then switch it the other way around? Could she make him feel so like he _belonged_ , belonged so entirely to another person?

"Well..." Rimmer drew himself to his full height, stroking Lister's back. "I want to go back to our quarters." I want a smegging shower. I want to sleep with you snoring and breathing your toxic breath in my ear. "And as I outrank you..."

Because it was there, and because he could, Lister started to play with Rimmer's penis absent-mindedly. He felt radiant.

Rimmer forgot the rest of the sentence. "Er, you're going to make me..."

"Yes." A smile played at the corners of Lister's mouth as he felt Rimmer becoming hard in his hands again. "Yes, _sir_!" he repeated, managing a halfway decent salute, noting that Rimmer was already saluting elsewhere. Lister leaned in and mumbled into Rimmer's ear, "I love it when you pull rank on me..." Pull, he thought. Such a wonderful verb.

"Yes. I'll continue to do it, miladdio," Rimmer stated, trying to look official and failing miserably.

"Mmm... I'll enjoy that." Lister gave him a teasing look, as he stopped stroking. "When I feel like it." He didn't get off on authority, but he did get off on making Rimmer feel good. And so he resumed stroking when he saw the pained look that crossed Rimmer's features. "But yeah... Let's go to ours." That word echoed in his mind. Ours. Sounds a lot like hours, that does, he thought. Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all...

Rimmer looked at his erection as Lister once again let go. "Sorry, old boy... on hold again," he sighed at it.

 

Kochanski clambered out from the awkward position she had been holding, tucked under the cockpit of the DJ ship with the chair between her legs. She stood, stretched, and cracked her neck. Although the fix was the same, the Computer on this ship was far more complex than Kryten, and it had been difficult and painstaking to implement. Even worse, she would not know if she had done so correctly until she restarted the Computer. She felt a little in awe; it was, quite simply, the most complex and powerful machine she had ever had her hands on. She replaced the access panel and re-connected the main power line. A telltale glowed red on the console, and she held her breath. A few more lights flickered to life, and then the entire cockpit lit with a pleasing sunny glow. Systems readouts came back online. Kochanski let out a breath.

"How long have I been offline?" the Computer asked, in a sweet voice.

"Two weeks," Kochanski replied. "You're a complex machine, after all, and I didn't want to cross-wire anything." She tittered nervously.

"Diagnostics underway," the Computer stated. A few lights flickered. "Diagnostics complete. All systems normal. Ready for use."

Kochanski shivered at the word 'use.' It succinctly described what the Computer had done with all of those trillions of Aces. "You do know - Ace... well, Arn... he doesn't want to be Ace."

"Understood. I had predicted as much."

"And you're not bothered by it?" Kochanski asked, ready to leap out of the cockpit.

"Negative. My pathological fixation appears to have been remedied."

Kochanski nodded. "Yes, it's a common failure of CRAP brains. But the fix is fairly straightforward." She frowned, remembering Kryten's descent into acute guilt, which he was still struggling to emerge from. Lister was trying to help. Rimmer was undoing everything Lister did. "Do you feel... bad about what you did?"

"I acted according to the best data I had at the time. The weakness in my programming is regrettable, but at all times, I act according to the best data I have at the time."

Kochanski nodded again. "Yes. Yes. We do the best we can." She felt an odd camaraderie with this ancient, powerful, and well-meaning, if coldly rational, computer. She reached out to touch the console with her fingertips. "What do you plan to do now?"

"Continue with my work. Find another hero - a more amenable one, perhaps - and train another savior of the universe." She said it quite coolly, quite calmly. Then she paused, and when she spoke again, it was with the first emotion Kochanski had heard from that silky voice. It was questioning, hopeful. "Perhaps I could convince you to be the next Ace, Miss Kochanski?"

Kochanski sat down in the pilot's chair, abruptly, startled. Her? Ace? Hero? Finally... _using_ the brain and the natural talents she had cultivated? Slowly, a broad smile spread across her face.

 

Later, much later, Lister cradled the treasure he'd found in the kitchen in his hands, before slipping it gingerly into his pocket. His entire face was glowing with mischief and anticipation, and he chuckled to himself as he left for the corridor. He considered, for a brief moment, trying to do a summersault, before remembering that the object in his pocket was fragile. Right. That wouldn't do at all; they'd found a crate of them hidden under an assortment of pickled gherkins in the corner of one of the larger rooms of the cargo deck last week, but there were only five left.

He glanced around as he neared his and Rimmer's quarters. He wasn't doing anything secret, after all, but Arn was still slightly uncomfortable with the others knowing about them, although of course everyone did. The fact that his mind was dwelling so firmly on other things made him jump all the more at the sudden voice mewing close to his ear. Well. Nearly everyone knew, he amended himself.

"Heeeeey bud! You out for sex or food?" The Cat glanced at the suspicious bulge in Lister's jumpsuit trousers. Damn. And he thought _he_ was the best hung creature on this ship! Maybe... naw. That was just crazy thinking. He went back to preening.

Following the Cat's gaze, Lister shifted uncomfortably. There was no smegging way he was showing him the jar or explaining what it was for. Not to _Cat_! "Listen," he began, "I'm in kind of a hurry here..." He paused, taking in the crimson silk tuxedo with jet-black belt and matching bow-tie.

Cat always noticed when someone was checking out his outfit. "Good, huh? I thought I'd made the trousers too tight at first, but then I figured, hey! You can never have too-tight trousers, am I right?" He angled his hand for a high-five, and Lister, heartily agreeing, followed through.

"You just made this, then?" Despite the many outfits he'd seen the Cat parade around in over the years, Lister was impressed. They were on a stolen lander, after all; it wasn't like he could just pop down to the local fabric shop and scrounge around for half-priced merchandise. There was even a little black and red striped handkerchief in the breast pocket, lined with gold.

"Sure thing, bud! Gotta look good for my date with Bud-Babe!" Cat's fangs gleamed in the evening lighting.

"Wha, a date? With Kris?" Lister felt... happy. Yeah. That was it. He really did, he was surprised to find. "Not bad, not bad! How'd ya manage that, then?"

Cat straightened his lapels, the image of dignity. "Well, she doesn't _exactly_ know yet. Took me a few weeks to get ready, but I'm aaaallll good now!"

Lister crossed his arms, and smiled smugly. Oh yes, that made a lot more sense. "Oh, eh? When were you planning on telling her?"

"On my way right now!" Cat paused, looking, all of a sudden, slightly worried. "Hey bud... You sure you're OK with this?" His nose twitched, as though it was trying to gauge Lister's reaction by his scent.

"Wha, me? Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well..." Seeing the Cat this hesitant was slightly disturbing. It didn't last long, though. "Bacofoil Bud was saying how you and her had something going on. Personally, I didn't believe him, but..."

"...Whoa, whoa," Lister interrupted, "Bacofoil, what? Ace?"

"Yeah, shiny dude! Handsome face!" Cat struck an Ace-like pose with enviable ease. "That guy!"

Lister rubbed his forehead. "Look, man, he's not here. It's Rimmer; it's been Rimmer all along." He sighed, and leaned against the wall. Arn wouldn't like this, but then again, there was nothing related to the Cat that he actually _did_ like.

Cat laughed. "Nah, that's what _he_ said, but I told him - ain't no way I would have made a move on..." He caught Lister's arched eyebrow and unrelenting gaze. "...Goal-post..." Lister nodded. "Trans-Am..." He nodded again. "But..." No, no, he had hit on shiny handsome dude, not goalpost head! The Cat flailed his arms, his eyes reflecting the light in an almost menacing manner, "I smelled the two of you having sex!"

Lister nodded once again, pulling the small jar out of his pocket, and angling it so the Cat could see. It read "Patak's Special Madras Sauce", in elaborate, crinkly letters. "Yeah," he said, giving the jar a little twirl. "Me and the smeghead." He shrugged. "Who knew?"

The Cat watched it warily, his eyes growing wider. "Say it ain't so," he choked, one leg undulating in a rather horrified spasm. Lister just smiled and shook his head, slipping the jar back into his trousers. With a sound rather like a kitten being picked up and removed from its ball of yarn against its will, the Cat fell against the dirty wall, his brand-new suit - impossibly - forgotten. With a final, loathing look at Lister, he started running towards the nearest shower, expecting to spend the better part of the night in there. Cats hated water normally, but with the thought of diddling fridge-magnet-head in his mind, he was far too disgusted with himself to allow his own tongue to touch his skin.

Lister watched him go, with equal parts pity and amusement. As his escaping figure disappeared into the darkness, Lister turned, and pressed the Door Open button, peering inside.

Oh. Indeed. He plucked the jar out again, and shook it like a stern pointing finger at the twilight of the room beyond. "I did tell you not to start without me, didn't I?" He listened to the muffled, indignant reply, then entered and closed the door behind him with a giggle.

And so, night fell on Starbug, and all was well.

For a time.


End file.
